


Karakuri

by Tales



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:38:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tales/pseuds/Tales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the last of the Lestranges dies in Azkaban, Hermione Granger and her colleagues in the Department of Mysteries have thirty-one days to assess and catalogue the entire contents of the family vault before it's passed on to Narcissa Malfoy. As if planning a wedding wasn't enough stress by itself. Artefact inspired by the work of Clive Barker. The word karakuri means a "mechanical device to tease, trick, or take a person by surprise". It implies hidden magic, or an element of mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrs_helenesnape](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_helenesnape/gifts).



> This was my entry for the 2010 SS/HG Exchange at Livejournal. As such it's completed, and as long as Real Life doesn't get in the way too much, I'll post a chapter per day until you have the whole story.
> 
> Recipient: mrs_helensnape  
> Title: Karakuri  
> Rating: 15-18ish  
> Warnings: Adult themes and language. Selfish Ron.  
> Original Prompt: While working as an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries, Hermione is cursed by one of the Death Eater objects she is studying. Will Snape be able to save her? Would he even want to?  
> Betae: geyer, bambu345 and alwaysjbj  
> Alpha readers: arynwy and savine_snape

  


"You're going?" Hermione asked, peering up at Luna Lovegood.

Luna nodded. "It's the monthly meeting of The Thaumatobiological Society. Daddy is really looking forward to the talk on feral Fwoopers. Apparently, a pair escaped captivity in Lagos about a decade ago, and now there's a thriving colony. The speaker's an old friend of his. He's been studying them for the last three years. You could come, too. I'm meeting Daddy at the Leaky Cauldron for dinner beforehand, and you're not meant to work on these when there's no one else here."

Hermione grimaced. "I can't. I'm supposed to go to the Burrow for dinner to discuss wedding arrangements with Molly." 

"I thought your parents had hired that Muggle castle?" 

"They did, but if Molly had her way we'd have two services. Just don't ask." 

"And Ronald? What does he want?"

"I have no idea. He conveniently seems to have his mouth full every time he's asked a question. I'm still trying to work out whether that's because Molly plans it that way or because he does."

Luna smiled beatifically. "Probably both. Don't stay too long."

"I won't. I promise. I'll just finish filling in the R.A.S.I.53 for this," Hermione promised, picking up a small cube. To the right of her desk was a crate of other miscellaneous items. To the left was a similar crate with items which she had already deemed safe, and a smaller, heavily warded chest of those which were no longer Rare And Suspicious Items, but Proven Dark Artefacts. "No tests. Just the preliminary descriptions." 

"Be careful. Wrackspurts tend to come out in the twilight. If you were hit by a Putrefying Curse, then we would never get the stains out of the chair, and Ronald would be upset."

"I know, but we only have twenty-two days left, and we're not even a quarter of the way through."

"Why do we only have twenty-two days?"

"It's the law, Luna."

"It's the law now, but will it be the law in twenty-two days from now?" 

"Luna!" Hermione exclaimed. "The Wizengamot can't just pass a new law because they feel like it."

"It's what they've always done up to now. Besides, technically, Minister Shacklebolt still has Peremptory Powers. They were never rescinded after the end of the conflict, so it wouldn't even need the Wizengamot, just him." 

Hermione sighed. Sometimes Luna could be almost as exhausting as Molly. "'Night, Luna. Enjoy the talk."

Luna beamed and adjusted the strap of her copious shoulder bag. "See you in the morning," she replied. 

Hermione checked the position of her three quills over the three colour-coded copies of the form, and began to dictate.

"Description: Fist-sized wooden box with decorative yellow-metal inlay. The wood appears at first glance to be mahogany, the metal brass. There are almost invisible seams in both wood and metal on all faces," she continued as she turned the box around and around. "These may be artefacts of the construction process, but I suspect the piece may actually be some sort of puzzle." She held the cube in her left hand and rapped on it with the first knuckle of her right, listening intently to judge if it was hollow inside. The note was dull and short, and a sharp brief pain made her lift the knuckle to her mouth and suck away a jewel of blood that had welled up there. She set the box down, gingerly testing for some small flaw in the stylised sun pattern of the inlay on that side, a rough edge, or a bent corner. 

The box gave a click, followed by a steady ticking. Hermione tried to concentrate, despite drooping eyelids, as the box seemed somehow to come apart according to some preordained plan, the brass sun rising up along with about fifteen narrow segments. For each piece that rose up, the one next to it stayed in place, then top and bottom twisted in relation to each other and sun and segments dropped back down to form an irregular, many pointed star. As the centre of the star unfolded outward into a wooden lotus blossom, Hermione slumped forward onto her desk.

  


* * *

  


Severus awoke all at once, the scent of a soap that had been removed from the market years before as overpowering to his senses as it had been on Lily's skin when she was twelve years old. He struggled free of the soaked sheets that had twined around him like a straightjacket. His curses went no further than the inside of his head, but were no less vitriolic for that.

He swung bare legs from the bed and pushed his feet into slippers that squelched unpleasantly, so that he abandoned them and got up barefoot to survey the damage, shucking the boxers he had slept in and taking a towelling robe from a hook on the back of the door to ward off the chill of the early hours. The bedding was soaked, probably the mattress, too, judging by the way the water trickled in rivulets to stain the carpet.

He hadn't had an episode like this since his mother had started his magical training, years before he had first received his wand. He had a temper, and he had on occasion used his wand to loose magic that would have been better kept leashed, but not since his mother's death had he used wandless magic in his sleep, not even when he'd killed the only other woman he'd ever loved. His mother had begun coaching him early, as soon as the extent of his burgeoning power had become apparent. She'd shown him how to channel his magic into the Art of Potion Making before he was even permitted to own a wand. An outburst like this...

Severus allowed himself to do something he very seldom did. He recoiled from any supposition as to the significance of this overspill of magical energy and set to work on putting everything right before the water could seep through the floor to damage electrical circuits and his library on the level below. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione shook her head, hoping to clear the fuzziness from it. Several pale violet paper aeroplanes dislodged themselves and fell to the floor, but she ignored them. She pushed her chair away from her desk and rotated first one shoulder and then the other, trying to get rid of the kinks from her nap, soon falling into the routine of stretches that were her habit before she began her semi-regular morning workouts at the gym. Only when this was complete did she look at her watch. Relief flooded through her. She was going to be late, Molly would grumble, but if she didn't go home and change first, it would only be half an hour or so. She tugged open her desk drawer, grabbed her keys and collected her cloak and her handbag from the coat stand by the door.

Passing through the outer office, she traced her fingertips along the outside of the reconstructed brain tank, smiling contentedly as 'Albert' followed the movement of her hand on the glass's inner side, magical filaments trailing behind him in a show of flickering purples, greens and blues. "'Night, boy," she whispered.

The room of doors was silent as she passed through, requesting exit and waiting while the walls seemed to spin, though now she knew that it was in fact the floor which moved, while a sensory illusion fooled her inner ear into thinking she was stationary. The lifts were still rattling up and down, surprising Hermione with their level of activity. On a normal day she might have taken the stairs, but she was already going to be more dishevelled than she would like when she reached the Weasleys'.

Her first hint of disquiet crept in as she crossed the atrium, several colleagues nodding to her as they headed for the bank of lifts. "'Night, Frank," she called out to the guard on duty. When you worked late as often as she did, it made sense to keep on the right side of the security staff. "Are you covering for Cuthbert?" 

Frank's brows furrowed together. "Night? It's seven in the mornin', hen," Frank answered in a guttural Scottish accent that made seven rhyme with leavin' and morning sound more like moanin'. 

"Merlin!" Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Are any of the Weasleys in yet?"

"Arthur's been in since half six. He _did_ ask if I'd seen you. Other brother, too. Haven't seen hide nor hair of your dearly beloved, though."

"Ron's not my dearly beloved. Well, he is, but don't call him that." Her gaze flicked to and fro between the lifts and the Floos, but she knew that, tempting as it was, she would only store up trouble for later if she went home without calling on her future father-in-law. "If you see Luna or Croaker, can you tell them I'm going home to freshen up and I'll be back by half past nine?" she requested. "But, first, I better go and see Arthur and ask him to intercede for me with Molly." And Ron, she added silently.

  


* * *

  


Severus drained the last of his morning pot of coffee and set his breakfast dishes in the sink for later. He made a clucking noise between his tongue and the roof of his mouth as he crossed to the back door and lifted down a battered waxed cotton jacket and a long leather strap whose attachments jingled. As if by magic, his legs were suddenly buffeted by about seventy pounds of long-haired canine. 

Bowie was an animal shelter near-reject Severus had laid claim to less than a day before he would have been put to sleep. His black and white patchwork pelt was nearly white along his muzzle. His eyes were mismatched, one a bright icy blue, the other a dark soulful brown. His broad chest and heavy legs made it obvious that he was only part border collie, and that the smaller part. Only Severus's skill with Potions kept him active and healthy despite chronic arthritis and a heart condition. On an average day he ate about five times as much as Severus did. 

Severus crouched slightly, getting almost on a level with the dog as he ruffled the fur at Bowie's neck and set his ears flopping back and forth. He clipped the lead onto the dog's collar while the beast panted his approval, letting his tongue loll out to one side in a doggy grin.

As usual, Severus inspected his back garden on his way out before he and Bowie made their way around the grey stone-built house and wound through the village streets to the newsagent. They made their way onto the moors, and Severus allowed the dog off the lead once they left the road behind. He paused as he reached the crest of one of the rolling hills, fishing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket as he looked back the way he had come. Upper Flagley was less than thirty miles as the crow flies from the city where he'd been born. The same river flowed through both, though here it was fast-flowing and clean. In every other sense, the two places couldn't be farther apart. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione Apparated into the yard at the back of her tiny cottage and was immediately greeted by that ultra-fine Scottish rain that's almost mist and a feline duet that gave the impression it lost little of its volume despite the window between her and its source. She swayed slightly on her feet, feeling as if she'd got up out of bed too quickly. She reached out to hold the garden wall until the dizziness passed. "I know. I know. I'm a bad mummy." 

"Not much as girlfriends go either." Ron glared sourly up at her from the back doorstep.

"I love you, too," Hermione retorted bitterly. She hated when Ron acted like this. 

"Funny way of showing it, staying out all night and coming home pissed out of your tree when you were meant to be planning a wedding," Ron accused as he got to his feet.

"It's normal to wait for an explanation _before_ you go throwing accusations around," Hermione threw back, feeling the blood pounding in the veins at her left temple and gripping the wall even tighter. "If you had, then you might have rated an apology. As it is, I'm tempted to hex your head as far up your arse physically as it is metaphorically. You're the one who gets blattered every chance he gets. And _I_ am not meant to be planning a wedding. _We_ are meant to be planning a wedding, not that you've lifted a damned finger to help." 

"When I _did_ make a suggestion—"

"For fuck's sake, Ron! Even if I wasn't inviting my relatives and even if the place wasn't smothered in Muggle Repelling Charms, I am _not_ getting married on Chudley Quidditch Pitch. And I'm _not_ making Luna wear an orange dress, or having orange place settings or orange flowers."

"There's nothing wrong with orange!"

"Not if you're a bloody nasturtium, there isn't. If on the other hand you're a person and you have any taste at all, then looking like a giant space hopper is to be avoided."

"Well, maybe we should just forget the whole idea if it's _that_ stupid!"

Hermione swayed again. "Maybe we should," she answered quietly and deliberately.

Ron's face froze, eyes wide, mouth half open. "Right then..." he finally muttered, his weight shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "We're still on for tonight, right?" he checked. "Indian takeaway and one of those VDV things — Just none of your mushy stuff — early night?"

"Ronald Weasley, if you think you're getting laid tonight — or ever again in this lifetime — you can make that Indian a phal instead of your usual wussy korma and stick it where the sun doesn't shine! Now piss off. I have cats to feed."

She brushed past him on the way to the door, ready to answer with a death glare if he tried to stop her, but he just stepped back and let her go. She fussed over the cats and put fresh food in their bowls as well as topping up their water and the dried food they always had to snack on between sachets. Then the tears started and her knees trembled. She made it through to the bedroom and threw herself onto the queen-sized four-poster, relieved that she no longer had to worry about her ability to stay vertical. 

  


* * *

  


Severus abraded a last few grains of sawdust from a tiny wooden gearwheel before cleaning all the dust from the surface and pressing it firmly into a tray that was packed tightly with a blend of the finest sand and various other ingredients. He clipped a second frame on top of the first and sieved fine white powder over the array of minute cogs and wheels. He heaped on more of the sand mix from a sack and then reached for his wand, flicking it toward the trays in a gesture he made time and again on his casting days. Instead of a gentle oscillating vibration meant to allow the sand to settle slowly around the wooden pattern pieces, getting rid of as much air as possible before he packed the sand down and made the sprue holes, the frames almost shot off his work table in a blast of lilac light. Severus caught the frames in both hands, narrowly avoiding breaking his wand in the process. 

Bowie's head lifted from the carpet where he lay in a morning sunbeam, and he gave a gentle whine.

"I know, boy," Severus muttered, as he put on full-length dragon hide gloves and used a pair of tongs to lift a thick-walled crucible of half-melted silver from a brazier and return the container to a rack obviously designed for the purpose. "Go to your room," he told the dog, wanting the beast well clear of any unanticipated spell effects. 

Bowie lifted the brow over his blue eye in an almost human gesture before he rose to his feet, padded sleepily from the workshop and could be heard thumping his way upstairs.

Having removed the gloves again, Severus pointed his wand at the brazier's red-hot coals with the requisite twirl and flick. _"Frigio!"_

The temperature in the whole room dropped in an instant. 

Severus reflexively rubbed at his upper arms as he moved forward to examine the brazier. The coals were white, but not ash-white. They were rimed in frost. 

  


* * *

  


By the time Hermione had cried herself out, had a bath and dried her hair — with the hairdryer she kept for when her mother visited — she knew there was no way she was going to get back to the Ministry. She'd made it into her pyjamas and robe and knelt in front of her living room fireplace with a pot of Floo powder.

"Department of Mysteries, password: linnet," she announced as she tossed a large pinch of powder into the faltering fire. "Hello!" she called out, hoping that someone would be catching up on paperwork. None of the experimental rooms had fireplaces.

"Hermione? Is that you?" There was a bit of scrabbling on the other end of the connection and then a face appeared. Daniel Croaker's father was head of their department, but Hermione knew, having been mentored by the son when she first joined the section, that his appointment was only based on nepotism in so far as he had apparently inherited his father's flare for making the sort of intuitive leaps that would allow him to comprehend some concepts her more methodical approach struggled with. Even after she'd officially completed her apprenticeship, they'd often partnered together on projects, finding that together they could do things neither could do alone. 

"Danny, can you tell your dad I'm not going to make it today? I think I must be coming down with something. I fell asleep at my desk last night, I feel dizzy if I move too quickly and my magic hasn't been this bad since I had to use Bellatrix Lestrange's wand during the Voldemort conflict." 

"Funny you should mention Lestrange..." Danny hinted, but his voice was soft and held a hint of concern. He was a genuinely caring guy, which was why women went out with him despite his appalling track record. It was as if every one of them could see the potential there, and they told themselves that they would be the one to make him fall in love and give up his philandering ways. Hermione prided herself on having more sense, but that didn't stop Ron from treating Danny much as he had once treated Viktor Krum. 

"I know, believe me. Another twenty-one days and everything in that vault has to be passed over to Narcissa Malfoy whether we've had a chance to examine it or not. I just wouldn't be any use like this. I'd be more of a liability. I'm going to get my hands on some Pepper Up and crawl off to bed after this. With luck it'll be some twenty-four hour thing and I'll be in before you in the morning. If not, I promise I'll go to Saint Mungo's and get checked out. Can you ask Luna to check the memos that arrived overnight and send replies on my behalf to any that need them?" 

Danny gave her a lopsided grimace. "Do you have any Pepper Up?"

"It's only a year out of date," Hermione rushed to protest. "And let's face it, with ingredients like that it's not as if anything can really survive in it to go off." 

"Go to bed, Hermione, straight to bed. I'll talk to Dad, and if Luna isn't on your doorstep with chicken soup and _fresh_ Pepper Up sometime within the next hour, I'll be very surprised."

  


* * *

  


"You say this first incident happened whilst you were sleeping. Do you happen to remember if you were dreaming? There may be a connection between that and the form the magic took."

Severus kept his eyes on Bowie, ignoring the tweed-suited Healer who was sitting behind his desk. Another benefit of living in a wizarding village was having the magical equivalent of a GP on hand without having to go to Saint Mungo's. Of course, unlike Saint Mungo's it wasn't free, but Severus had no intention of Apparating anywhere until he got to the bottom of this problem. He had no desire to find himself overshooting and ending up in the English Channel. "Of course there's a connection, you dunderhead," he snapped. He paused, remembering Lily, her head thrown back as her body spasmed over him, illuminated in a flash of lightning from the other side of the ivy curtain which hid them both from the world. "It was raining in my dream," he admitted.

"And this dream disturbed you?" the Healer asked.

"Not at the time. No."

"But it did when you woke up?"

Severus sighed. "The water everywhere disturbed me when I woke up. The dream was about an old girlfriend. It happens quite often. It's actually the most pleasant of my recurring dreams and the only disturbing thing is that it isn't real. The dream is not the cause."

"Perhaps. Often our subconscious deals with these things in ways our conscious brain simply doesn't realise. Think about it. Is there some sort of anniversary that you haven't thought about consciously but which might have been troubling you under the surface?"

"There's always an anniversary. The day I first saw her. The day I first got up the courage to speak to her. The day we got our Hogwarts letters. The day we left home. The last day she ever spoke to me. Her birthday. My birthday. The day she married someone else. The day she died. And then there are the other anniversaries... The day I killed Albus Dumbledore. The day I was branded. The day I went on my first raid. The day I became headmaster. That's just for starters. That is my _past,_ Botts. I can assure you that, in comparison, my present is absolutely rosy. I do not have a mental problem."

The Healer shook his head. "Well, if you won't see a psychologist, then the only thing we can do is continue to monitor the situation."

"That's it?"

"It might be an idea to tire yourself out before you go to bed," Healer Botts suggested.

Severus grunted, "Heel!" and stalked out of the room to pay his bill at the front desk, grumbling the entire time about paying money for nothing. 

  


* * *

  


Luna added an extra couple of pirouettes after she came out of the Apparition. Somewhere in the middle she realised that Hermione's planters were looking more bedraggled than usual and made a mental note to get a message to Neville. He'd pop over with some new plants to cheer Hermione up.

Luna rummaged through her bag, discarding by touch a Gurdyroot, a bag of cola cubes, a paperback book, a small snuff box she'd been examining earlier that morning but then lost and some fresh dittany she'd picked on her way to work. Finally, lurking at the bottom, she found Hermione's keys and let herself in. 

She slipped off her shoes by the door, and took a large jar from her bag before she set it down out of the way under the kitchen table. Soon, she had a tray made up with the soup from the jar, a couple of rolls she'd brought just in case Hermione hadn't been shopping lately, a glass of milk and a bottle of Pepper Up. She padded upstairs to check on her patient. 

Luna pushed open the door to Hermione's bedroom as quietly as she could, but two of the bed's three occupants lifted their heads to watch her arrival. Their movements, for once, didn't seem to be enough to rouse their human pet. Kitty, a long-haired tabby with a white nose, chin and chest, uncurled from her ball in the angle between Hermione's stomach and thighs. She took a half step forward, stretching each of her back legs in turn and then her back and then dropped her chest low to the ground with her front legs at their longest extent. Then she padded to the edge of bed. Escher, a short-haired queen whose fur was so mottled that it was hard to tell whether she was white with black spots or black with white spots, flexed only her claws, taking a firmer grip of the covers. She'd been the winner in the morning's game of cat chess, gaining the high ground of Hermione's hip, and she was loath to give up the advantage. 

Luna shook her head as she set the tray down on top of a chest of drawers. "No, Esh, you go, too." She paused to give Kitty a tickle under the chin before she leaned over to pick up Escher, attached to a cotton blanket and the duvet. 

This finally caused Hermione's eyes to open slowly. "Hey, you," she sighed with a sleepy smile. 

"Hey, you, too." Luna set Escher on the floor once the bedding finally slipped from her grip, and shooed Kitty down from the mattress. She picked up the tray and sat on the edge of the bed so that it rested on her knees. "Feel up to some of Hannah's Scotch broth?" she enquired gently.

Hermione pushed herself up with an obvious struggle. "Really? No, but I suppose I should make the effort."

"I thought, if you were feeling weak, a mug would be easier than a bowl and spoon. Think you can manage it?" 

Hermione just smiled and held out both her hands, wrapping them around the mug when Luna held it out. "So, how annoyed is Croaker?"

"Gerald? Not annoyed, a bit frustrated, but he knows if you stay home you're sick as a pregnant Pogrebin. The warmth may be pleasant, but it only has nutritional value if you drink it. Do you _need_ a Warming Charm?" she asked, taking her wand out from where it was tucked behind her ear.

Hermione smiled and took a token sip of her broth. "I'm _fine,_ Luna, honestly."

"Daddy says any sentence that ends in honestly is a lie. You don't normally look so pale. I never realised how many freckles you have."

"Okay, I'm not _fine,_ but I don't have a fever. At least, I don't think I have. As far as I know freckles aren't a symptom of impending doom—"

"Not unless they overlap to form the shape of a Grim. They can be quite alluring on some people."

"Remind me to follow up on that remark when I'm less tired." 

Luna wrinkled her nose in delight. "Let's just say I'd be looking forward more to the first dance if Ron had picked the _cool_ brother to be his best man."

Hermione snorted a mouthful of broth back into her mug. "George has been Witch Weekly's most eligible bachelor ever since Harry married Ginny. And I hope you don't mean Bill."

"Bill?" Luna's nose wrinkled up further. "Bill doesn't work with _dragons..."_ She said dragons in such an airy breathless voice, her eyes glazing over as she stared sightlessly at a blank wall, that her friend couldn't help smiling. 

_"If_ there's a wedding, I think it would only be polite if _all_ the groom's brothers danced with the chief bridesmaid. _If."_

Luna's eyes continued to stare dreamily at nothing for long enough that Hermione wondered if the blonde had heard what she said, but then they returned to Hermione's face, clear, pale and placid. "He can be very cruel when he's insecure." 

"He's got no reason to be. Insecure, I mean."

Luna pulled a pendant watch out of her cleavage, noting the time. "Soup!" she insisted, waiting until Hermione took another sip before she continued. "Ronald feels like a fraud. He loved the fame, but now it's old news. There's part of him that feels that sooner or later everyone, including you, will notice that he's _ordinary,_ and his world will fall apart around him." 

"But I _know_ he's ordinary. None of us were ever really what the hype made us out to be. We—"

"Were just where we were, and we all just did what we had to. I know." Luna shrugged. "And I know that if Ronald worked at it, he'd find out he's a lot smarter than he thinks he is, but he's not really interested in working at anything more intellectual than Quidditch tactics. He overreacts to Daniel because he's threatened by smart men. He knows you share things with Daniel that you could never share with him. Maybe if he keeps faking it for long enough... Maybe he'll be a bit more secure once you're actually married..."

"And maybe he won't," Hermione whispered, burying her face in the mug for a long, long drink.

  


* * *

  


Severus decided to fall back on tried and tested methods. Potion making had worked before. He could surely make it work again. Of course, except for Bowie's medicines, he hadn't been brewing much of late, and it might take some judicious planning to work out which Potions he had the ingredients to make. He began by chopping fresh ginger, arnica and hyssop for an Anti-inflammatory Draught, adding them to some stream water in his favourite cauldron. Soon he had a vat of canine-friendly Blood Thinning Solution simmering alongside it.

As the cauldrons bubbled gently, he retreated to his back garden, trug in hand, with Bowie at his heels. His first attempt at weeding by wand uprooted a potato plant as well as the weed beside it, and after he had cleaned off the potatoes and added them to his basket, he took care to focus future efforts more carefully.

He gathered asphodel, carrots, leek, onions, shallots, sopohorous beans, whole valerian and wormwood, setting some items aside in his kitchen vegetable baskets, and taking the others through to his workroom. At the very least, he would have some uninterrupted sleep tonight. If expending all his power didn't work, then Draught of Living Death would do the trick.

An hour later, he had an array of filled potion vials, enough to last Bowie for a month and guarantee a full week of undisturbed nights for himself, _if_ he had been able to rid himself of the idea that the Potions weren't somehow more vibrant than they really should be. It seemed ridiculous to think that the Draught of Living Death was _too_ clear. It simply wasn't possible. There was no such thing as too clear. As for the other potions, they might refract an occasional sunbeam. That was all. They certainly didn't sparkle like the vampires in some teen romance. Or shimmer. Or any other property of the light that had nothing to do with that most down-to-earth of magical disciplines. 

He aimed a simple Vanishing Spell at the first of the cauldrons to eliminate all traces of the Potion's ingredients. A simple, _"Evanesco!"_ and that nasty tide line around the cauldron's rim disappeared — along with his favourite cauldron.

Bowie ran for the back door and his flap as the expletives filled the air. He found himself a nice sunny spot in the garden and stayed right there until his nose told him that dinner was ready.

  


* * *

  


Hermione was half asleep when she heard the key in the back door, felt the mattress shift as the cats departed in hopes of their teatime feed, and knew that Luna had returned. Hermione had spent much of the time since Luna's last visit asleep, but the remaining hour or so the blonde's words had rattled around inside her head, along with Ron's suggestion that they should call off the wedding. She knew he hadn't meant it, knew he was well aware of all the non-refundable deposits her parents had already paid, or at least he should have been. She sometimes had the feeling that talking to Ron in terms of pounds sterling was like talking to a child about Monopoly money.

She still didn't think that he'd worked out that the castle's two day hire cost as much as he made in a year. In fact, he'd called Thornbury _'a bit pokey by castle standards'_. 

It was all just too much. They were too far in to back out. Weren't they? They had five months left. The best venues were booked more than a year in advance. If they— If _she_ cancelled, and then it was just cold feet... The invitations had been sent out and her parents had gone to so much trouble already. She'd hoped the castle would make the wizards feel more at home, but if they reacted like Ron, it might just make them feel blasé and superior. She felt so tired and stupid, as if this bug had stretched her thinner than at any time since her third year at Hogwarts, and she had to choose.

Her tears spilled over, and that was how Luna found her. The blonde took her into her arms and held her, stroking that wild hair without saying a word. 

  


* * *

  


The bus drew to a stop with an ear-splitting screech of brakes. The man who jumped down was in his late twenties, but his eyes were those of someone much older. "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emer—"

"Enough, Shunpike," Severus barked.

"Professor Snape? Why you ain't never—"

"I _said_ enough. Just take me to the most remote place you can. As far as possible from the nearest Muggle. No cocoa, no toothbrush, no extras, just the middle of nowhere. Understood?"

"Ehm, well, that'll be firteen sickles, Professor. Or, well, firteen for you an' anuffer seven for your friend." Stan gestured toward Bowie, who had suddenly appeared behind the professor. "So, one Galleon, free Sickles for the pair."

Severus's eyes hardened almost imperceptibly. "He'll pay," he announced as he strode past the conductor and took the nearest bed, propping himself up against the headboard in the most upright position possible and crossing his arms. Bowie jumped up onto the bed opposite and laid his head on his front paws. 

Stan's gaze went from dog to master to dog, met Severus's glare straight on and dropped instantly. "One for the middle of nowhere, Ern!" he called out without printing off any tickets and closed the doors.

  


* * *

  


"Dinner's ready," Luna announced, calling into the back yard and then Levitating three trays into the living room.

Neville came in and washed up at the kitchen sink while Luna made sure that Hermione was safely settled on the sofa. 

"Thanks, Luna. You didn't have to, you know. I'm feeling much better now that I've had some proper sleep. I could have managed. And thanks to you, too, Neville," she added, as Neville settled himself in one of the armchairs and pulled a tray onto his lap. 

Neville shrugged. "Hannah's working the late shift at the Leaky Cauldron. I'd just have been sitting around at home with Gran." 

As Luna settled into the other armchair, Hermione started the first DVD of the Andrew Davies' adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. "Pemberley's gardens don't come into it for quite a while," she told Neville, "but they're worth the wait."

Luna used her fork left-handed to eat, freeing up her right hand to lift an object from the crate she had brought with her. "What's that?" Neville asked.

 _"This_ is what Hermione was working on when she fell asleep last night," Luna replied, turning the box this way and that.

"You know, I had the strangest dream where it was some sort of puzzle and it all opened out like a water lily or something, but it's probably just because it reminds me of the box in this really gross horror film that my cousin Gordon made me watch when I was about eight."

Luna tried to work a nail into one of the seams, but it wouldn't budge and she set it down on her chair arm until she could finish eating and picked up her knife. 

By the time they were disturbed by the insistent hammering at the front door, Colin Firth had made himself disagreeable to the entire population of Merryton, Luna had passed off six items as being completely safe, though she still kept coming back to the puzzle box, which, so far, insisted on simply being a cube of wood, and Neville was stretched out on the hearth rug, working on his third bottle of lager, which Hermione thought was only fair recompense for both his hard work in the yard and putting up with Jane Austen.

Luna sighed. "Do I let him in?" she asked.

"He probably won't go away until you do," Hermione conceded. 

"Should I go?" Neville asked.

"It's fine, Neville. Stay where you are."

"You're an arse," they heard Luna inform Ron as she opened the front door and walked away.

"Yeah, I already got that."

Hermione lifted an eyebrow as the blonde tucked a leg under herself and reclaimed the armchair.

"You told Daniel to ask me to answer your memos," Luna responded blithely. "The answers to four of them were, 'Ronald, you're an arse.'" 

Despite herself, Hermione had to stifle a giggle. "What is it, Ron?" she asked.

Ron's gaze darted from Luna to Neville and back again before he fixed on the middle of the duvet that was covering Hermione. "I came to say sorry," he muttered under his breath, and then he produced a bunch of lilacs like the ones Molly had in her garden from behind his back.

Luna stood up again. "I'll get a vase."

 _"You_ came to say sorry, or your mum sent you to say sorry?" Hermione sighed.

"I was going to come anyway... after I talked with Dad."

"Well then..."

"Well what?" Ron asked.

Luna took the flowers from his hands and stuck them into the vase she'd brought through from the kitchen. "I think she wants to actually hear this apology," the blonde pointed out. 

"What? But—"

"You could start with _why_ you're sorry," Luna hinted.

"I'm sorry I jumped to conclusions when you didn't show up last night. I should have waited to hear you out."

"Apology accepted," Hermione replied curtly. "Is that all?"

Again Ron's eyes darted around the room as if he wished Luna and Neville were elsewhere. "I didn't mean it about the wedding. I was just angry."

Hermione exhaled slowly. "I _did_ mean what I said, Ron. I don't know anymore whether marrying you is what I want."

"But, Hermione—"

"Hear me out, Ron. I called my mum this evening. I've told her not to pay any more deposits. I haven't told her to cancel anything, _yet."_

"What do you mean, _yet?"_

Neville lumbered to his feet and ambled to within arm's reach, but it was Luna who spoke.

"She asked you to hear her out."

Hermione nodded her thanks to the blonde and swallowed before she continued. "When I feel better and things calm down at work, we need to talk this through, but I need a husband who'll be supportive when other things get me down, not someone who'll deliberately hurt me as much as he can because he feels slighted by the fact I'm not giving him my full attention. I suggest you go back to Diagon Alley and work out whether you want to be that husband, and whether you're capable of being that husband."

"Don't you love me anymore?"

"Of course I love you. I've loved you since I was fifteen years old, but that doesn't mean I'm prepared to let you treat me badly. Go home, Ron, and just think about it."

Ron made to take a step forward, but Neville got between him and the couch. "Look, I don't know what the situation is here, but I know you'll mess things up more by staying and shouting than by doing what she says."

For a second Ron looked as if he was thinking of pushing Neville out of the way, but then he turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the front door on his way. 

  


* * *

  


Severus made sure the sky was clear overhead. He launched himself upward with a thrill of anticipation. It had been so very long since he had made time for this, for the literally soaring elation of leaving the earth with all its ties and its troubles, every oppressing weight behind. He shot skyward, corkscrewing ever higher so quickly that sky and earth merged into a dizzying blur. He didn't glide like an overgrown bat. He streaked across the sky faster than the fastest racing broom, without aid.

Bowie barked like a puppy and chased after him whichever way he went, and he never strayed more than three or four miles from the dog before wheeling and doubling back to find him. The stars stood out like pinpricks in the violet curtain of the sky, the moon was just a sliver and Severus Snape was free and unencumbered by the wants, needs, desires, foibles or machinations of any other living soul. And he rejoiced.


	2. The Beginning of the Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione's magic weakens even further. Meanwhile Severus finds that a new wand helps him to control his magical outbursts and he decides that he and Lucius deserve a night out to remember.

  


Hermione insisted on getting ready for work as normal the next morning, despite the fact that her night had been largely sleepless. 

Luna's protests never actually made it into words, but she made breakfast for both of them while Hermione was in the shower and gave her friend more than her share of concerned glances as they ate.

Eventually, as Luna cleared the dirty crockery away, Hermione's patience snapped. "I'm fine, Luna. I can't stay home and brood, and they need me at work."

"We need you well and focused," Luna replied. "Have you tried using your magic, yet?"

"Well, no, but I feel fine... considering. Luna, I promise I'll be as careful as careful can be once I'm actually dealing with the artefacts, I'll do paperwork, anything, but I can't sit here feeling useless."

Luna turned on the hot water tap, squirted some washing up liquid over their mugs and bowls, and filled the basin with water. "If you're fine, wash that lot up while I have my shower, using magic. And I expect your hair to be dry when I get back." She raised her eyebrows, and once Hermione gave a grudging affirmative she bounced off. 

Hermione watched her go, waiting until she was out of sight to wash up the crockery by hand and tie her hair back in a tight French braid, spraying it with so much hairspray that it would have been impossible to tell whether it was wet or dry when she started. 

She was feeding Kitty and Escher by the time Luna trotted back downstairs in a butter yellow set of robes that were creased enough to have spent the night in Luna's bag of many colours.

"All done," Hermione insisted.

Luna tilted her head on one side as if considering the puzzle that was Hermione for several seconds. Then, she slung her copious patchwork bag over one shoulder, set the puzzle box back on top of the crate of items, tucked her clipboard loaded with paperwork into the bag and hoisted the crate into her arms.

Hermione led the way into the back yard and locked the door behind her, trying to tell herself that it wasn't a big deal to skip the magical wards. "The alley behind the theatre?" she suggested.

Luna nodded. "You first."

When Hermione had gone, she checked for splinched body parts before pirouetting into thin air. 

  


* * *

  


Severus prowled to and fro in front of the shop front, dressed for the occasion in all his wizarding glory. He glared occasionally at his pocket watch, as if it were its fault that Ollivander had yet to open his doors.

As soon as the old man drew the bolts on one half of the outer door and had it open, Severus glided past him and into the shop's dimly lit interior.

Ollivander bolted that half of the door open and took his time with the other side.

When he re-entered his place of business, his tone was polite, but his eyes darted nervously between Snape's face and the wand he held in his hand.

"How exactly may I help you, Professor?"

"I believe I may need a new wand."

"Might I enquire why now? Your mother's wand has served you well for over thirty years."

Severus flourished his wand in the direction of a rickety-looking chair in the corner. _"Reducto!"_ The chair was reduced to sawdust, but magic continued to rebound around the room for several seconds thereafter, blasting a hole through the counter, rending the curtains, cracking the main display window and ricocheting through the shelves of wands, dislodging so many boxes it was impossible to tell what the real damage might be. Severus arched a brow, crossed his arms and waited impatiently for Ollivander to make his selections.

  


* * *

  


"Hmmm." Ollivander tapped the end of box after box before selecting yet another to pull out and present. "Not the unicorn hair. Not the unicorn hair." His finger paused on a large gap in the shelves, and he descended his ladder and began to sort through the boxes on the floor, taking a box rather longer than most from the debris on the floor. "Vinewood with phœnix feather, fifteen and three quarter inches, pliable."

Severus took the wand from its maker with no great amount of optimism, having already tried upwards of thirty different combinations. He swept it in the direction of the debris behind the counter. To his surprise, around half the boxes that littered the floor returned to their original position on the shelves.

Ollivander snatched the wand from his hand. "Closer. Closer," the strange old man muttered under his breath, "but not quite there."

He pushed the wheeled ladder several feet to his left and pulled down yet another box. He removed the lid and held the wand out toward Snape almost like a waiter asking a customer to approve a bottle of wine. "Ebony, like your mother's wand, fourteen inches, rigid, but with a phœnix feather core."

Severus felt the change as soon as he took the wand in his hand. He flicked the wand in the direction of the window. The crack disappeared. The curtains... became better than new, not simply as if the tear had never been, but their colour restored to a richer red than they had seen in the last twenty years. With another couple of flicks, Severus returned all the wands to their shelves and repaired the counter. 

Finally, the pile of sawdust in the corner became a chair again, and Ollivander beamed. It wasn't until the following morning that the wandmaker would realise the significance of the wand's choice and contact Magical Law Enforcement. 

"Twenty Galleons," he requested, and Severus duly obliged. 

  


* * *

  


Severus set his new cauldron full of Potion ingredients down on top of the less than pristine table top, and gave Tom a curt nod in response to his greeting.

As Severus removed his leather gloves, the landlord opened a fresh bottle of red and brought a large glass over to his table.

Severus passed him a Galleon and took a seat on a bench built into the wall with a good view of the door. He sipped the red, savouring its light raspberry flavour and underlying tannins. 

Curious eyes followed his every move, their hostility causing the hairs on the back of his neck to rise. Severus forced his fingers to remain still on the tabletop instead of drumming out his restlessness and impatience. He didn't allow his heel to tap. He didn't smoke. For half the glass, he exacted a slow count of fifty after each sip had rinsed his palate and been swallowed before he took another sip. The second half he drained in one.

Replacing his gloves and picking up his purchases, he span into a swirl of black robes and disappeared.

  


* * *

  


Severus set Bowie down with a grunt, and cast a Summoning Charm to pull the loose hairs the dog had left behind from his dress robes. He peeled the resulting fuzzball from the end of his wand with a grimace that clearly told the dog it was uncouth to shed in such a way.

Bowie looked back in unconcerned delight, sniffing the air.

With a flourish of his wand, Severus produced a piece of parchment from the air. He checked the message it contained, folded it into a paper aeroplane and then switched it to his left hand, using the wand in his right to first make it levitate and then launch it over the hedge that bounded the lane's right. He strolled slowly along the narrow pathway, allowing his message time to reach its recipient. 

Meanwhile the dog zigzagged back and forth between the green-leaved bramble bushes on the left and the high wall of yew on the right, sometimes a few feet ahead, sometimes a few feet behind. 

When Severus reached the point where the hedge curved off to follow either side of a long straight gravel drive, he found a house-elf waiting by the wrought iron gate.

"Master Lucius says Elsay is to ask why Master Severus is not using his wand to open gate."

"You may tell Lucius that I have a new wand."

"Master Lucius says I should ask Master Severus the name of the horse he rides when he visits."

"Tell him that I never have ridden and I never intend to."

The gate opened, and Severus chivvied Bowie through. "Elsay, I hope you will see to it that Bowie is looked after while he is here." Bowie paused a foot or so in front of the elf, lowering his head and snuffling slightly. He waited until the elf reached out to him and then bestowed a doggy kiss that covered half Elsay's face in saliva.

Elsay giggled and wiped at the wet patch.

"Bowie!" Severus chided. "Go and find the poncy pooches. Go on." He pointed towards the manor that stood at the far end of the drive, and the dog bounded off. 

"Elsay will leave the front door unlocked for Master Severus. Master Lucius asked for Master Severus to wait for him in the library."

"Thank you, El—" the elf disappeared with a snap of her fingers, "—say."

"Severus, to what do we owe the honour?" Narcissa drawled a few minutes later.

"No offence, Narcissa, but the honour, in this case, is all Lucius's," Severus answered. "I'll have him back before dawn, but I wouldn't wait up."

"Aren't you taking things just a little for granted?"

"Would that be the assumption that Lucius has as much reason as I have to want to get out for a day where he isn't an object of curiosity? The assumption that his hectic social calendar has a gap? Or the assumption that you'll let him off the leash?"

"Actually," Narcissa nodded toward the hearth, where Bowie was curled up in a ball with two Afghan hounds, "I meant the assumption that I'd let your motley half-breed anywhere near Fareiba and Farhang." 

"Are you worried that your 'beautiful girl' has a taste for mongrels?" Severus suggested.

"Fareiba has impeccable taste. Farhang, however, will associate with these low types, and they lead him to the filthiest places."

"Sometimes, Narcissa, getting dirty is half the fun. If she weren't such a lady, I would suggest Fareiba try it." 

"Will you stop flirting with my wife, Severus?"

"Only when I find her match. Elsay?" Severus waited barely a second. "Would you fetch Lucius's cloak, gloves and cane? He's going out."

"If he gets fleas, I'm holding you responsible," Narcissa warned.

"Naturally," Severus conceded with a smirk, "and I would gladly... _endure_ such punishment as you might devise, but I intend him to need nothing more than a bath and a nice long rest." 

"See that you're right, Severus." 

  


* * *

  


The estate's wrought iron gates closed behind them with a clang.

Severus's eyes glittered like molten pitch as he turned to his counterpart, holding out his left arm almost as if to shake hands, but closer. "Trust me?" he asked, the humour in his voice making it obvious he already knew both the answer he would be given, and the real one.

"Never," Lucius responded, taking hold of the proffered forearm with his own left hand, and allowing himself to be taken where his companion willed. 

"Severus!"

"Yes?"

"This is Paris."

"And?"

"And you can't do that! _No one_ can do that. Precious few can Apparate over so much flowing water even with a stop in the Channel Islands, and you brought _me_ side-along."

"Oh, do calm down. You were never in any danger. Now, on the way back, I do believe I intend to be intoxicated, so your concern might be justified, but then, I also intend for you to be too inebriated to care by that point." 

"And what else did you have in mind? Is there some reason you chose to get _me_ drunk instead of some beautiful young woman?"

"I don't know any beautiful young women."

"Well, don't think I'm going to put out just for a cross-channel hop," Lucius drawled.

"Contrary to popular opinion, your arse is not irresistible."

"So, why _did_ you bring me? And will I like it?" 

"That depends. Do you think you can get us a table at Vallageas'?"

Lucius tilted his head back, the better to stare down his autocratic nose. "I am a _Malfoy._ I can get us a table _anywhere_ in the 'Arrondissement des Enchanteurs'."

"Then might I suggest lunch at Vallageas', followed by a little stroll, which will no doubt involve a stop for every clothes shop or mirror we pass, a few drinks, then dinner, and we can round the evening off with one of those shows for which Paris is famed, maybe even a casino." 

"All the wizarding casinos are in Monte," Lucius answered with a sly smile.

Severus flicked him a deliberately impassive glance. 

"You _could_ have warned me to bring more money."

"I'm sure the tailors will send their bills. You _are_ a Malfoy." 

  


* * *

  


"Mum?" Hermione croaked as she struggled to open her eyes and focus on the source of the familiar voice. 

"Jim! She's awake. Go and fetch a nurse or whatever they call them."

"Healers, Mum. They're Healers. Hogwarts had a school nurse, but they're all Healers... here." Hermione tried to push herself up on her elbows, but her mother placed a firm hand on her chest. 

"Stay where you are until the... Healer has seen you. You've been unconscious for a long time."

"What? How long?" Hermione's eyes widened in shock as she wondered how many months she might have missed.

"Miss Lovegood brought you in just before eight in the morning yesterday," interjected the firmly authoritative tone of the duty Healer. The woman looked as if she would brook no nonsense, with her steely hair pulled back severely in a ponytail. Her gaze flicked to a timepiece pinned to her lurid green robes. "That was nearly twenty hours ago."

"Oh, that's not so bad."

The Healer snorted. 

"Well, not compared with being Petrified for months. A day's..." Hermione shrugged.

"Jim, you better fetch the boys from the cafeteria," Mrs Granger began. "If that's okay?"

"Let's just wait until I have a chance to examine her before you fetch anyone," the Healer responded, pulling closed the privacy curtains around Hermione's bed. "In fact, I would be grateful if you and your husband would give us a few minutes alone. If you want to get a drink in the cafeteria, the ward has been secured for the night, but the other Healer will let you out. I'll let you know when I'm done." 

Mr Granger took his wife's arm. "Come along, dear. Let the doctor do her work. You know how much you hate having relatives hanging around while you're working. We'll just be around the corner, poppet," he added for Hermione's benefit. "As soon as she lets us know it's okay, we'll be back."

The Healer cast a number of spells, but they were all non-verbal and the resulting varicoloured nimbuses meant nothing to Hermione and were designed to be seen from a distance rather than inside the spell.

"So?" she asked when the healer seemed to have finished her wand-waving and was pouring a glass of water.

"So you're dehydrated. Drink!" The Healer passed Hermione the filled glass and took a seat on one of the hard plastic chairs that Hermione's parents had vacated.

Hermione sipped at it dutifully. "I could have told you that from the headache. And?"

"And other than that and being rather underweight, you're in perfect physical health."

"So why am I here?"

"Keep drinking. Because you're in perfect physical health for a Muggle and Muggles don't channel their life-force into acts of magic."

"What? I don't understand."

"Ms Granger, part of the reason I asked your parents to leave is that I need you to tell me whether you are happy."

Hermione's brows drew together and she frowned in concentration. "You think this is psychosomatic?"

"It's a possibility which has to be considered. In a few rare cases depression has been known to cause a witch or wizard to lose their abilities, although the onset is generally more gradual, unless there is a sudden trauma." The Healer laid things out with oft-practised equanimity.

Hermione sighed. "I don't know. Really, I don't. Work's chaotic, but that's nothing new. And, well, every bride gets cold feet, don't they?"

"Do they?" the Healer asked, rising to her feet again. "When you finish that glass, I want you to get one of your parents to pour you another, and once you drink that one, I want you to get some more sleep. In the meantime, I want you to think about what I asked. I don't want to prescribe a course of Cheering Potions just yet, but if this continues and we don't find another cause, I don't see an alternative."

As Hermione watched the Healer go, her thoughts dwelled on what Harry had once told her about Merope Gaunt, whose heart had been shattered when her husband left her. Merope had either foresworn her magic or lost her power as a result. Could she — Hermione Granger — really be losing her magic, not because Ron wanted to leave but because he was making her miserable, or because some part of her didn't want to upstage him? 

  


* * *

  


"Shhhhh!" Lucius admonished in a stage whisper. "Mustn't wake Cissy."

"You tha' tripped," Severus sniped, less quietly, grinning at the sound of cantering paws on marble floors and bending to receive Bowie's greeting.

The dog cannoned into Severus's legs and knocked him on his arse, but instead of shouting Severus simply spread his legs so that the dog could get close enough to snuffle and lick to his heart's content. "Yeah, missed you, too, boy," he whispered in a tone obviously not designed to reach Lucius's ears.

"Can't you teach that beast not to stick his nose in your crotch? I _know_ where that's been." 

"Stop complaining and get the brandy, Malfoy. Just because a nice young lady gave me her Floo directions and no one gave you theirs."

"That was no lady," Malfoy protested. "And I wasn't trying."

"Neither was I, but it's funny how a pile of poker chips can affect some women's libidos."

"Tramp!" Lucius accused.

 _"That,_ my dear Looshius, is the _one_ advantage of being single. Besides, I probably won't even call."

"Why the hell not?" Lucius demanded as he splashed rather more brandy into each of two balloon glasses than he would have done if he were sober.

"Because this way it's a perfect memory. If I _did_ call, either she'd turn out to be as dumb as your blond mutts or she wouldn't be interested in _me._ The vaguely dashing if not conventionally attractive wizard with the dress robes in a casino in Monte Carlo, on a winning streak and throwing money around, yes. Not the ugly old git who lives with the sheep shaggers in back of beyond, Yorkshire, and spends three quarters of his time stuck in a workshop and the other quarter out traipsing the moors like Heathcliffe."

"Well, when you put it like _that..."_ Lucius sighed as he warmed and swirled his brandy. "You really _are_ going to be flirting with my wife for the next hundred and fifty years." 

  


* * *

  


"They could've come and got me when she woke up before."

"The Healer told them not to." The second voice was quieter, more reasonable, Harry's.

Hermione didn't open her eyes. She felt as if she'd barely got back to sleep, and she was too tired to deal with Ron's rants. 

"So _they_ say. I was only upstairs. An' how come Luna goes and fetches _them,_ but she doesn't even think to tell me? I'm _still_ her fiancé. And why does Luna get to keep _her_ key for the cottage, but Hermione took back mine?"

"Could be because Luna didn't turn up when she was at work, eat everything in the fridge, lock one of the cats out and leave dirty dishes everywhere for when she came home."

 _"Once._ That happened once. I got called out on an emergency before I could clear up."

 _"Gentlemen!"_ A lilting Cardiff accent intervened. "Miss Granger needs her rest. If you can't sit quietly, then you'll have to leave."

"We'll keep it quiet," Harry promised. 

There was a rustle of fabric and then the sound of retreating footsteps before Ron spoke again. "I hate this," he muttered. "I can live with the fact she has _them_ listed as her next of kin, but she put _you_ as her emergency contact. It's like I'm the bloody next door neighbour or something."

 _"Ro-o-on,_ it's not some huge conspiracy. She just put me down when she left Hogwarts _because_ you two were going out and she didn't know what would happen if things didn't work out." There was a pregnant pause. "You've got a tendency for dramatic exits, mate. Look, I'm going to go get us both some tea. You stay here. Keep an eye on her."

There was a grunt, the rustle of more material and then the scraping sound of a chair being drawn up. She felt Ron's familiar broom-callused hands take one of hers, one thumb stroking over the ring that rested on her wedding finger, and she opened her eyes just enough to watch him through her lashes.

He sniffed deeply, and she was shocked to notice that there were tears making his ginger eyelashes clump together.

"Don't leave me," he whispered, apparently still thinking she was asleep. "I don't know what I would do without you."

"Find some other idiot," Hermione whispered back, and his eyes darted from her hand to her face, the tears spilling over.

Suddenly, he was cradling her head, his fingers twined in her curls, and his mouth was covering hers, his tears soaking her cheeks. She panicked for an instant, struggling for breath, and then she relaxed into it. When she did, he eased away from her, taking both his seat and her hand again. "You scared me half to death, you know?" he sighed.

"Scared myself, too." 

"Hermione, what you said the other night—"

"Ron, not now. Don't go making promises to me because I'm here. You _can't_ make promises because I'm here. I don't even know who I _am_ right now. If I don't get my power back—"

"It'll be fine. We might not be able to get a bigger place to begin with, but we'll get by on what I make."

Hermione shook her head. "Ron, you've got another two or three years on a trainee's salary. If I don't have magic, then we need gas, we need electricity, we need a car and petrol and road tax. We need a washing machine. I would need to go back to school." 

"You don't _need_ to go to school. You said you'd stop working, anyway, when we had kids. And we can get a place near Mum so she could help out, maybe even stay at the Burrow if things are really tight."

"Ron, even selling my place, we couldn't afford a pig sty near your parents on your salary. And I said once my career was established and we built up a nest egg that I would stop working long enough to have a couple of kids if I had to and look after them until they were school age. That's six or seven years, not the rest of my life. I don't want to start married life sharing a house with your parents. If I have to go back to the Muggle world—" 

Hermione stopped at the sound of running footsteps rapidly approaching, and Ron stood and drew his wand.

Harry jerked back the curtains around the bed. "Ron, Savage sent a Patronus. There's a briefing at the Ministry. We've got a lead."

"But—" Ron's eyes darted back to Hermione.

"Trust me, Ron." Harry slanted a meaningful look in Hermione's direction, raising his eyebrows. "You want to come."

"Go," Hermione whispered. 

As soon as Ron shifted his weight, Harry took off again, making for the exit. Ron followed at his heels. 

  


* * *

  


Severus drained the last of his brandy and stumbled to his feet. Setting his glass down on the side table that housed the empty decanter, he made his way to the armchair where his companion sprawled. A half-hearted kick at Lucius's booted foot produced no response. Removing Lucius's glass from the blond's hand and placing it beside his own, Severus returned to survey the insensate blond one last time. _"That,_ I believe, is mine," he announced, tugging a huge cerise ostrich feather fan from under Lucius's arm. "Elsay!" he called. 

With a pop, the elf appeared.

"Elsay, would you be so kind as to put Lucius to bed? I think Narcissa would probably prefer it if you put him in the spare room. You should probably tie his hair back and make sure he has a bowl or a bucket at either side of the bed. Then, I would be very grateful if you could bring Bowie home. I will be returning by Floo, and I will see to it that the wards are removed so that you can Apparate directly into the kitchen." 

"Of course, Master Severus," Elsay answered, bobbing slightly in what Severus assumed was a curtsey.

"Bowie, wait here for Elsay. Okay, boy?"

Bowie gave an almost silent whine, his doggy brows drawing together. 

"Wimp," Severus accused. 

Elsay took Lucius's limp hand, clicked her fingers and they both disappeared. 

"I'm hardly abandoning you. Ten minutes at most, you old fleabag." 

Still, Bowie implored Severus to take him with him. 

Severus shook his head slightly, regretting it immediately as pain seared through his left temple and a purple tint crossed his vision. He picked up the reinforced satchel that held his winnings and settled its strap crosswise over his torso, slung his cloak over his shoulder and made sure he had his gloves and his fluffy memento of the evening. Taking a pinch of Floo Powder from a trinket box on the mantelpiece, he cast it into the fireplace. "One-hundred-and-three Whitby Road, Upper Flagley." 

Severus clamped his jaw shut and tightened his throat as he stepped into the emerald flames. Holding his breath, he closed his eyes as he span faster and faster, willing himself not to throw up. He waited until the spinning sensation had eased almost completely to open them again and watch for his home.

He stepped out into chaos, his kitchen apparently ransacked. His gaze caught on a pair of brightly polished black shoes, and he followed the body upward until he glared into a familiar face. _"Long_ bottom!" Severus whispered menacingly. "What in the name of all seven hells is this?"

Neville blanched, but stood his ground. "I'm very sorry, sir, but if you would just resheath your wand, I can explain."

Severus looked down, startled to find that he had dropped the fan and his wand had found its way to his hand so readily that he hadn't even thought about it.

"You think you can explain... _this?"_ Severus's twirl of the wrist somehow encompassed the whole room as well as the sounds of destruction coming from farther afield. "For your sake, I hope it's better than any of the essays you presented me with when you were at Hogwarts," Severus retorted, swaying ever so slightly.

"Excuse me a second," Neville said politely before turning his head towards the door into the hall and shouting. "Savage. He's here. He just arrived by Floo." Neville drew his own wand slowly, careful not to make a precipitate move as a herd of hob-nailed elephants or a close approximation thereof clattered downstairs.

"Professor, have you seen this morning's Daily Prophet, yet?" Neville asked in a calm voice.

"Where's the bastard?" another voice called out before Severus could reprimand Longbottom for asking such a ridiculous question.

 _"Weasley?"_ Severus sneered. "Oh, and Potter, of course. Can't have one without the other!" He turned his back on the remnants of the so-called Golden Trio as crisply as he could manage. "Strangely, _no,_ Longbottom, I have not seen this morning's Prophet. It may have escaped your notice, but we _are_ in fact several hundred miles from London. Owls don't Apparate. I expect one will turn up within the next half hour or so."

"Well, sir, you see, someone may have been cursed somehow, and we were supplied with some information, which, if true, would indicate that you might have a connection to the victim."

A shovel-like hand gripped Severus's shoulder, swinging him around, but before Weasley could do anything else, Severus had his wand pressed tight under the offender's chin. "Take. Your. Hands. Off. Me," Severus warned slowly and softly. He waited until Ron complied to remove the wand and turned once more to Neville, as Savage finally sauntered into the kitchen. "Longbottom, you and your companions have broken my wards and turned my house into a close approximation of the local tip. All, apparently, on the basis of purely circumstantial evidence. That much I have tolerated out of respect for your positions as Aurors, if not for those of you filling those positions. I will _not_ be manhandled or treated with the sort of disrespect Weasley has just displayed. I demand that he leave this house immediately."

"Weasley," Savage ordered. "Clear up your mess, and, if Mr Snape doesn't object, why don't you make a pot of tea for everyone and we can discuss this in a civilised manner?"

A loud crack caused all the Aurors to turn toward the source of the noise with wands raised, all of them aiming at least a foot over the head of where Elsay had her arms wrapped around Bowie's neck. There was another crack and elf and dog were gone again.

"Thank you _so much_ for that, gentlemen," Severus sneered. 

"Whose elf was that?" Potter demanded. "And what was he doing with that dog?"

"Potter, be quiet and help Weasley," Savage barked, the volume causing Severus to flinch. The Auror's hand dipped into his pocket and he brought out a neatly folded handkerchief, which he held out to Severus, pointing at his own cheek with his other hand. "You have some lipstick," he explained.

Sheathing his wand at only the second attempt, Severus declined the offer of the handkerchief with a grimace-inducing shake of the head. He draped his cloak over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and then removed the satchel and finally his outer robes and jacket until he was stripped to shirt, waistcoat and trousers. He made his way to the kitchen sink, where he picked up a shaving mirror he kept to one side. He did, indeed, have coral lipstick on his cheek and all around his mouth. Mentally, Severus awarded Longbottom points for keeping a straight face. Turning on both taps, he rolled up his shirt sleeves and scooped water from under the hot tap to splash on his face before it reached the basin, not waiting for it to run warm. He worked up some lather using the plain coal tar soap he kept there, and unhurriedly washed and rinsed his face before ducking his whole head in the tepid water that filled the basin. Had he been sure of a steady hand, he would have made them wait while he shaved as well. 

He opened one of the cupboards that made up the top part of an old fashioned kitchen dresser, taking out two tins, which he set on the kitchen table one after the other. "Tea, sugar. I take mine strong with two sugars and a dash of milk. The mugs are on the counter," he nodded towards the mug tree. "Milk's in the fridge. I'll know if you spit in it. We'll be in the front room, assuming you left the furniture intact." 

He strode ahead of the Aurors, making sure to reach the other room first and take the armchair that had its back to the morning sun, so that the Aurors had to squint and his features were in shadow. "Perhaps you would care to do a better job of explaining this intrusion than Longbottom has so far managed?" Severus suggested to Savage, as both Neville and the more senior Auror took seats on the sofa at right angles to Severus's chair. 

"Mr Snape, I'll get straight to the point. I understand that you recently purchased a new wand. Is that correct?"

Severus's eyes narrowed and he resolved to speak to Ollivander the next time he was in Diagon Alley. "If you're asking, then you already know it is. I wasn't aware that buying a new wand was a crime."

"Can I ask why you chose to replace your wand at this particular time?" Savage continued.

"My previous wand is over half a century old. It had become unreliable. A wand that is adequate for an eleven-year-old boy will not necessarily be suitable to channel the magic of a wizard in his prime. I really see no reason why this should be a matter of concern to the Aurory."

"Tell him, Longbottom."

"Sir, the wand you purchased yesterday shares a core with one other, one of the first wands Mr Ollivander made after the end of the Voldemort Conflict. Hermione Granger's wand. If you had received this morning's Prophet, you would have discovered that Hermione collapsed on her way to work yesterday and at the time of going to press she had yet to recover consciousness. She was suffering from total magical depletion."

"That's spurious at best," Severus announced, allowing just a little of his previously contained ire to show. 

"I'm aware of that, Sir. Personally, I don't believe that you are responsible for the situation. Nevertheless, you must understand that when Ollivander reported that you seemed to have a surge in power, just when Hermione was losing hers, and that your magic now responds better to a wand which shares a core with Hermione's than to the one you've used ever since you entered Hogwarts, then we had to investigate."

"I see," Severus observed coolly, his eyes lifting to the doorway, where Weasley and Potter were framed. The spoons on the tray Weasley Levitated rattled and the tea in each mug rippled as the young man failed to keep it steady. "And what do your friends Potter and Weasley believe?"

The tea tray crashed to the floor and Weasley aimed a binding hex at Severus, but Severus, more by muscle memory than anything else, just managed to get a shield in place. "I see duelling practice is as scant in Auror training these days as lessons in manners," he remarked as he rose to his feet. 

"I think you always were an evil bastard and you still are," Ronald spat. "You hated the three of us."

 _"Please!_ You insult Mr Longbottom, here. You really aren't _that_ special. I hated every single one of your glory-seeking house." 

"Maybe, but you hated us more," Ron continued. "Somehow, you saw a chance to get Hermione's power and you just sucked it out of her."

"If I chose to drain anyone's power, it would not be Miss Granger's," Severus snarled as both he and Ron shifted slowly closer to each other. Severus watched both Ron and Harry, darting bloodshot eyes between their faces and their wand hands. "I'd take it from some worthless lump who's too lazy to make full use of the brains and talents they were born with. Someone who deserved to lose it."

Ron was now so close that he had to tilt his head downward to meet Severus's gaze. "You're a lying git, Snape. You lied to Dumbledore and Voldemort for years. You did it, and we'll prove it somehow."

 _"I_ have no reason to wish to see Miss Granger weakened. If I were the perpetrator, I could choose any number of better candidates. _You,_ on the other hand, I seem to recall from your Hogwarts days, took every opportunity to try to cut Miss Granger down to your own far less elevated level. Could it be that you just couldn't bear to marry a woman who outshines you in every way? More intelligent, more magically powerful, vastly more attractive, more ambitious. You just can't help feeling that she's far too good for you, can you? But if she were powerless, all her learning would mean nothing. Her ambition would do her no good, at least not in the wizarding world. You should have waited until after you were married, Weasley. She might have coped with finding herself dependent on her husband, but she'll never marry a man, thinking she's a burden to him." 

Ron's fist swung for Snape's eye, but the former spy grabbed his hand, twisting it downward as he stepped behind the taller man's back, and then drew it back up until the wand dropped from Ron's fingers.

Severus pushed the redhead toward the sofa, pitching him head first into Longbottom and Savage. "Get him out of here, and don't come back unless you're ready to make an arrest."

There was a knock at the front door. A distinctive 'shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits' knock that Severus remembered all too well from his teaching days. "What the hell do you want, Lovegood?" he bellowed.

Luna wandered into the room, tiptoeing her way past the debris Weasley had left and gazing curiously around her as if the sight of four Aurors, one presenting his posterior to the world, was nothing unusual.

"Hello, Professor Snape. Did you realise your front door is wide open?" She rummaged in some hideous shoulder bag. "I wanted to know, since you made it, if there's a way to safely deactivate this."

Severus stared at the object in her hand in disbelief. "Oh fuck!"


	3. The Middle of the Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In light of Luna's revelation at the end of the last chapter, Snape finds himself on the run from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Much to Hermione's surprise, he asks her to go with him.

  
  


Severus stared in disbelief at the puzzle in Luna's hand. "Oh fuck!" 

She held the box out toward him. "This is so old I couldn't pick out the feel of your magic the way I can with your devices in Dervish and Banges, but that's your mark, isn't it?" She let the puzzle fall into his outstretched hands and in that instant Severus knew what he had to do. He turned into another Apparition even as Potter, Weasley and Longbottom all tried to grab him.

Appearing in the now empty kitchen, he grabbed the satchel with his winnings for the night and was gone once more. 

  


* * *

  


When the clatter of the breakfast trolley woke Hermione for the third time in three hours, she was less than amused. However, a bacon sandwich and a huge mug of strong tea did much to improve her temper, and it wasn't long before she began to ask about being released.

"Nonsense, my girl," the stern-looking Healer insisted. "Healer Strout will be doing her rounds in a couple of hours and there may be some tests we can run to try to work out what caused this."

"Healer _Miriam_ Strout?" Hermione asked sceptically. "Where are my street clothes?"

"Healer _Alpharia_ Strout," the Welsh Healer corrected. "She's her cousin, and she has an excellent reputation as a diagnostician, so you'll stay right where you are."

"You said that I'm perfectly healthy."

"For a Muggle, which means that for you—"

The Healer paused at the sound of a muffled bang, followed by another and another, each one seeming to get louder and closer. She turned on her heel and was about six feet from the ward doors, which had been locked for the night, when the doors blasted inward in a shower of coruscating turquoise and white sparks.

Framed between them was the figure of a man demented. Despite being wet, clumps of his hair were beginning to swing forward to frame obsidian eyes which glowed in desperation. His shoulders were canted down at one side, as if the bag he carried weighed down his very soul. His arms were bared to just below the elbows, exposing the brand Hermione had seen only once before, and his scowl bared clenched teeth that marked his determination as he fixed on Hermione.

Hermione wasn't so much aware of how he crossed the ward, as fixated on those eyes that seemed to pin her in place with their intensity. "Miss Granger," he growled. "Come with me, if you want to be a witch!"

The ridiculous hyperbole broke the enchantment, and Hermione had to lift a hand to her face to stifle a chuckle. "I'm s-sorry, Professor," she stammered out, "but you're no Michael Biehn."

The professor grabbed the blankets on her bed and threw them to one side. "Granger, you may wish to take a gamble on being a Squib for the rest of your life. I have no desire to gamble with my soul. This is a one-off limited-time offer, and it expires as soon as your court of eunuchs manages to work out where I am, which is likely to be just as soon as one of that pack of Healers get to a Floo."

Hermione wafted a hand between the two of them, trying to fan away the brandy fumes. "Sir, are you drunk?"

"A whole lot less drunk than I was half an hour ago, but almost certainly still yes." Severus barked, standing up straight. "Granger, I like the life I have built for myself since the end of the war, but I like my soul and my freedom more. Lovegood has already announced to all and sundry that I made the box which drained your power—"

 _"You_ built the thing!" Hermione screeched and began to look around for where the now-absent Healer had put her wand.

"Shut your damned mouth for once in your life, Granger, and listen! At this point in time I have two options. I convince you to come with me willingly. We find a way to rebalance our power and then destroy the box. Any charges can probably be cleared up, and I can return to my home. The other alternative is that I go on the run from British Magical Law Enforcement for the rest of my life. Believe me, Granger, if I do that, neither you nor any of your boyfriends will ever find me—" he lifted his left hand, showing the wooden cube he held, "—or the box. You have a count of three."

Hermione stared at him wide-eyed in disbelief. 

"Witch or Squib, Granger? Three. Two—"

Hermione dived from the bed, and he turned on his heel, taking it for granted that she would follow. Healers and patients milled around in the corridor where several wards showed signs of the professor's search, but they all crowded back against the walls as Snape approached, clearing a path from him to the stairwell. Hermione had to jog to keep up, her bare feet chilled by the vinyl covered concrete.

She could hear the sound of booted feet getting closer, landing by landing, as Snape grabbed her hand and began to drag her toward the fifth floor.

"I hope you have a plan," she muttered under her breath. "You can't Apparate out of here."

They reached the highest landing, the sound of pursuit getting closer and closer, and Snape pushed her toward a ladder. She looked up and saw a trap door marked fire exit. "It's a dead end," she protested.

"Climb, Miss Granger, now," Snape ground out without seeming to unclench his teeth.

Hermione climbed, pushing the trapdoor open when she reached it, and then having to resist the urge to take both hands off the ladder in order to cover her ears as alarms screeched loudly enough to disturb half the Home Counties. She winced and hopped from foot to foot when she found the roof was finished with gravelled bitumen that made each step feel like she was walking on knives.

An instant later, Snape popped up through the centre of the trapdoor, not even bothering with the ladder, and Hermione's stomach began to churn as she realised just what his plan for escaping the Anti-Disapparation field around the hospital was.

"No!" she protested, as Snape landed and scooped her into his arms as if she were a child.

"It's a bit late for maidenly protestations, now, Miss Granger," Snape sneered as he ran full pelt for the building's edge.

"No-o-o-o-o-o!" Hermione was still screaming as Snape launched himself upward from the lip of the building and climbed another twenty feet before they span into a midair Apparition just ahead of Harry's Stunning Spell. 

  


* * *

  


"You can stop screaming anytime now if you don't want me to dump you on the ground."

"You bastard!" Hermione screeched. "You nearly killed us both."

"No, your idiot friends nearly killed us both."

"Where on earth are we, anyway?" asked Hermione, scanning the dividing line where the green of fields became the blue of the sea. 

"Severus Snape's refuge is Westerwards Croft near Portsoy," Severus announced.

Hermione gasped as she found herself looking at the inside corner of a single-storey L-shaped building. Severus carried her over to what was obviously the croft's back door, right on the end of the short side of the L.

"What is this place?" Hermione asked in a curious tone as he set her down in the kitchen and dining area, which took up all of the L's bottom stroke.

"It belongs to an acquaintance, but they won't be using it in the near future. You can take the master bedroom with the en suite. I'll take the one with the twin beds."

"If I'd wanted to sleep, I could have done that in St. Mungo's, Professor."

"Well, I'm _so_ sorry to disappoint you," Severus sneered, "but there are a number of practicalities to deal with before we can make a start on any research, and the first of those is that I have a fucking gargantuan hangover and I haven't had any sleep." Severus headed towards a hallway that led off from the dining area at right angles. 

"No, the first is that you want my cooperation," Hermione argued. "And I want to know what the deal is with that box."

Severus sighed and set one hand on the wall at each side of the hallway, leaning forward into it. "The box is designed to get people to handle it. When it's touched by a Muggle-born witch or wizard, it draws their blood and creates a link between the Muggle-born and the box's owner, channelling power from the Muggle-born. I created it for the Dark Lord at Dumbledore's suggestion. Albus thought it would be better to have people stripped of their power as you have been, than to have them murdered. I finished it in October 1980. The Dark Lord was a little too preoccupied to worry about testing it. After he disappeared, I never saw it again until today. End of story."

"But—"

"But nothing. Find a way to amuse yourself. Write a letter for your parents or something. Explain what's happened. I'll arrange to have it sent."

"Before or after you read it?" Hermione asked in a hushed tone, the words just falling out.

"You're not a prisoner, Granger. If I didn't trust you, you wouldn't be here. You can come and go as you please. I'll even take you anywhere you want to go, provided we avoid places the Aurors might be watching. If you don't trust me, you can walk east for ten minutes and you'll come to a Muggle village. Of course, your pyjamas would hardly pass without notice there, and I don't have any Muggle money, but you might find some clothes in the bedroom that you could get away with, and if you want to wander over there and say you've been kidnapped, I won't stop you. It's hardly going to make any difference because if they catch me before I find a cure, then they'll either throw away the key or have me Kissed. If, on the other hand, you actually want to get your power back, we can work out a plan of action tomorrow, but first I need to see if I can find a Headache Remedy. Then, I _need_ to get some sleep. If I have to cast a Silencing Charm on you and ward my bedroom to keep you out in order to do that, so be it. After that, I need to get my hands on some ingredients and brew a couple of Potions." He used his knuckles to push himself back upright and walked off down the corridor, leaving Hermione to wonder what exactly she had let herself in for. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione managed to contain her curiosity until Severus had pillaged both bathrooms and retreated to what she later deduced must be the second largest bedroom. Once he was out of the way, she began to explore her surroundings. A brief look around the kitchen was enough to confirm that the croft wasn't owned by a Muggle. The kettle sat on the hearth, and so did a small cauldron. There was a wood-burning stove that Hermione immediately decided she was not going to touch if she could help it.

Where a modern kitchen would have had countertops built in, with cupboards under and over, one wall was dominated by a huge dresser of aged pine. The porcelain double sink was like Molly's, deep enough to do laundry in, one side for soapy water, one side to rinse. A well scrubbed table rested against a wall, and beside it a window seat allowed a view into the back garden.

The other end of the room housed the dining area and the table had been set up, two chairs to each long side, so that no one was deprived of a sea view through the window. The hallway ran along the inside of the L's long side so that all the rooms faced the sea. There was a single room nearest the dining area, then a bathroom, then the twin room the professor had chosen. The master bedroom came next, and the en suite bath was the last room off the hall before it opened into the croft's living room. 

No attempt had been made to plaster over the rough stone of the walls, and they were all painted the traditional white. There were no photographs anywhere, though she supposed that could simply be because the witch who lived here didn't wish to leave anything potentially incriminating in a home that spent so much time sitting empty. 

The wardrobe told her little she might not have guessed. There were two black one-piece swimming costumes, both from sports stores rather than fashion outlets. The robes were mostly the feminine equivalent of those that Snape had worn himself when he was teaching, only with rather more in the way of green between the black. They followed classic lines, no seasonal fads. They were the sort of clothes that belonged to someone who spent as much as or perhaps a little more than they could really afford, knowing that they would make them last for years. These, Hermione suspected, had been left behind as they were nearing the end of their life. They were two sizes too big for her, and Hermione guessed made to fit someone six or seven inches taller. The slim, elegant build of a mature woman, one who has a slightly fuller figure at thirty or forty than she did at sixteen, but who will probably look svelte for the rest of her life. 

The remaining robes were as eclectic as the others were predictable. These were the robes bought perhaps for some single special occasion and then never worn again, but kept anyway, just in case. There was a fitted sheath, its silk the green of creamy jade, with a matching organdie shawl. There were high-necked robes of black velvet that were fitted to the hips but then flared outward, embroidered along the cuffs, neckline and hem in a pattern of silver leaves and flowers. Then there was a set in garish red tartan. 

And Hermione knew exactly to whom this cottage belonged. 

She knew that it defied logic, but she felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders loosen a little at the thought. Severus Snape was a volatile man, but he would never have brought her to Minerva McGonagall's home if his intentions were anything other than _mostly_ harmless. 

  


* * *

  


"What's this?" Severus demanded, looking down at the neatly numbered list. "You have got to be joking, Granger!"

"No, I'm perfectly serious. You have to go out to get ingredients, anyway."

Severus scowled at the list. "Underwear, fine, but you can forget Marks & Spencer's and you can surely manage another day or two without jeans. It's going to be enough fun changing Louis for the right wizarding currency, without trying to get Muggle funds as well."

"Louis? Why on earth do you have Louis rather than Galleons?"

"Because they come from France. I could hardly trot down to Gringott's when it opened when your boyfriends probably already have me at the top of the most wanted list. I would have thought that was obvious." 

"No need to snipe. And if you have to queue up to change one wizarding currency for another, then you might as well change some for Muggle money at the same time. Then you can take your pesetas or your lira or your krowns or your punds to any major post office and change them for sterling as you need to." 

"Food?" he enquired, ignoring her last point. "You can't get by with whatever tins there are for a day or two?" 

Hermione scowled. "I'd say food is at least as much a priority as Potions... Unless you plan to break the news that you have a life-threatening illness?"

"It's hardly any of your business whether I do or not, Granger," Severus answered softly.

"I'll take that as a no, _Snape."_

Severus's eyes narrowed and Hermione knew that he instinctively wanted to insist on a 'Professor' in front of the surname, but she was damned if she was going to give him, 'Yes, sir, no, sir,' when he was calling her Granger.

"You can take it any way you want to. I can't spare more than an hour and a half on this trip."

"What happens after an hour and a half?" Hermione demanded. "Do you turn into a pumpkin?"

"No, I risk running out of time before a rendezvous, _which_ is none of your business." He looked again at the parchment. "Post letter to your parents, fine, later, even if it looks more like a novel."

"That's because it contains letters to Ron, Luna, Harry, Molly and my boss."

"Heat your bath?" Severus asked with a scathing glance. "Since when did I become your maid?"

"Since you took my magic!"

"I didn't _take_ your magic. You... misplaced it. What's wrong with the Aga?"

"It's a damned Aga!" argued Hermione. "Do I look like one of the Two Fat Ladies? Cookers are meant to have knobs and settings, not rely on whether you need to put more wood in."

"You can hardly burn water."

"And you can heat a bath in ten seconds flat. Don't push me."

"Pantene Pro-V Smooth and Silky? I don't want to know what that is, never mind walk into a shop and ask for it. And if you think I'm asking for _those_ things," he added, pointing at the feminine hygiene items that were last on the list, "you've got another thing coming!" 

"Are you always this much of an arse?" Hermione demanded.

"Only when I'm forced to abandon my home and go into hiding with a harridan."

"Then I suggest that the sooner you heat my bath and go to fetch your _precious_ Potion ingredients, the sooner we'll both be happy." She rose to her feet and stormed off to her bedroom with as much dignity as someone in pyjamas and borrowed flip-flops could summon. 

  


* * *

  


"You're an imbecile!" a silky drawl informed Severus from the darkness. Then a familiar hairy body hit his legs like a self-propelled cannonball. 

"And you're late, Lucius." Severus bent to fuss over the dog as Lucius made his way to the nose of Wiltshire's famous White Horse. 

"Well, if you hadn't left such a damned mess, or if you actually had more than one friend, I wouldn't have spent the day entertaining acne-faced fledgling Aurors and their interfering fathers. Kidnapping, Severus, really? I know you were bemoaning your lack of prospects, but that's a little Dark Ages even for you."

"I didn't kidnap anyone," Severus muttered, but he hadn't really expected any other interpretation given that Minerva's little cub had been screaming, 'No!' at the top of her voice when Potter attacked them.

"You might want to tell that to the Prophet." Lucius drew a furled newspaper from his robes as he set a large carpet bag down by Severus's feet.

"They'll believe what they choose to believe." Severus tucked the newspaper inside his waistcoat and slung the bag over one shoulder. "I hope the Weasleys weren't too much of an inconvenience?" 

"Elsay woke Narcissa when she came back, so we had enough time to prepare. The boy even let enough slip for me to add a couple of books to the bag. Don't take too long to get this sorted out, Severus. A decent portion of that money you won last night was mine. I expect a rematch."

"As soon as my name is cleared," Severus promised. "Goodbye, old friend."

"Good riddance," Lucius answered, his pale eyes glinting mischievously as he turned and disappeared.

  


* * *

  


Hermione was dragged unwillingly from her sleep as the nice, warm duvet was pulled lower and lower. She grabbed at it, trying to tug it back before its own weight pulled it off the bed. When it pulled back, she opened her eyes and found herself looking into a disconcertingly mismatched pair.

Their owner stopped tugging and greeted her with a wuff.

"Snape!" she yelled. "There's a dog in my bedroom."

"Well, you didn't expect _me_ to come in and wake you, did you?" the bane of her new existence snarled back. "Come and get your breakfast!"

"Okay," Hermione said as she padded down the hallway in her bare feet. "Let's try this again. _Why_ is there a dog here, and _where_ did it appear from?"

"Bowie is here because he's _my_ responsibility. Lucius brought him to our rendezvous last night."

Hermione stared first at the heap of shopping bags in one corner and then at the Aga where slices of egg-soaked bread were leaping into a frying pan while a plate with cooked slices soared its way to the dining room table, landing opposite where Snape sat reading a book.

"You named your dog after David Bowie because its eyes don't match?" she asked incredulously.

"No," Snape sneered. "I named him Bowie because it's short for Bow-Wow. Eat!" He gestured at the chair opposite his own.

"So did Lucius bring you all this other stuff, too?" she asked as she took a seat and cut a corner off the French toast.

Snape finally lifted his head from his book, the better to glare directly at her. "Lucius and I have an agreement. If we hear the other one has fallen foul of the authorities, we take an emergency bag to one of two pre-arranged points at midnight, provided we can do it without being followed. The bag and most of its contents were mine to begin with. Lucius was kind enough to add what looks like some of Astoria's things and these books. The rest I picked up at the twenty-four hour Asda when I stopped off to get some food to mix in with Bowie's Potions. I thought you'd probably want to do most of your own clothes shopping, but I picked up some basics."

"Bowie's Potions? All that fuss yesterday was to make Potions for the dog?"

"If Lucius hadn't brought him, I had to have the Potions ready to give them to him. Any more questions?" 

"I want my cats."

"Your cats have probably been taken to Miss Lovegood's house or your parents' home. Both those places will be under surveillance." 

"If Lucius Malfoy managed to get your dog out from under the Aurors' noses, then between us we can surely get a couple of cats."

"A couple of cats? Yes. _Your_ cats, no. Not until your friends get bored of waiting for you to turn up. Bowie was already _at_ Malfoy Manor. The elf who was supposed to bring him home got the fright of her life and Apparated straight back out again when she arrived in the middle of a cluster fuck of Aurors, leading to some wonderful headlines." His gaze darted to a couple of newspapers that had been discarded on the other end of the table. 

A second plate floated over to the table, and Severus set aside his book and picked up his knife and fork. 

Hermione pulled the newspapers over to the side of her plate. One was yesterday's Evening Prophet. The other was the Daily Prophet from this morning. The headlines on both were nearly identical.

"Incapacitated War Heroine Kidnapped?" Hermione snorted disbelievingly. "Am I supposed to be Imperiused or something?"

Snape continued eating, pausing only to pour a mug of tea from the pot on the table and add milk and sugar.

"Since his retirement from teaching, it appears that Snape has descended into a mire of depravity? Witnesses state that he was clearly intoxicated when Aurors visited his home to question him this morning. Furthermore, says Trainee Auror and war hero, Ronald Weasley, who is due to marry Miss Granger this summer, 'an elf turned up in the middle of our interrogation, and it had a dog with it that looked like Mad-Eye Moody. Snape must have managed to enthral one of the Hogwarts elves while he was working there, and he's using it to kidnap innocent pets so that he can experiment on them. Who knows what he'll do to Hermione now he's got a hold of her?' That has to be the lamest excuse for an explanation I've ever heard, even from Ron." 

"Not quite. Read on."

"When Mr Weasley was asked why he thought his fiancée had been targeted by the supposedly reformed Death Eater, he suggested that Snape was so bitter about his own failed love life that he had taken Miss Granger in a fit of pique at not being invited to the wizarding wedding of the year?" Hermione's brows knotted together. "But you _were_ invited. _You haven't bothered to R.S.V.P.,"_ she added pointedly, "but you were invited."

"I and your fiancé beg to differ."

"I filled in your name myself," Hermione insisted. "Molly had you on her list as well, so even if I hadn't had you down on my list, you would still have been invited."

"You may have written the invitation, but did _you_ post it?" 

Hermione's cheeks darkened. "I'm going to kill him. I don't need magic. I'll just tear him apart with my bare hands." 

"An excellent sentiment, but one that will have to wait."

"I _really_ want my cats now." 

Hermione's lips tightened as Snape refused to acknowledge her request. "What are the books?"

Snape's eyebrows lifted, and he paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. "See for yourself. Just don't read them in the bath... _or_ rip any pages out, and use a bookmark, don't dog-ear anything. Some of the Malfoys have been known to put protective jinxes on their books."

"I'd _never—"_

"And Tweddle's Compendium of Magnificent Beasts and Monsters is missing the page on basilisks because mice ate it, I suppose?" Snape interrupted.

"That was an emergency," Hermione protested. "And you don't know it was me," she suddenly rushed to add, afraid she had given too much away. 

_"That_ was a sixteenth century hand-illuminated volume, and the day I believe that Potter and Weasley solved a mystery that baffled the brightest minds in the land for over fifty years is the day I cut off my wedding tackle and ask everybody to call me Sue." 

Shamefaced, Hermione finished her plate of French toast and poured herself a mug of tea before she spoke again. "What are the plans for today?" she finally asked.

"I generally take Bowie out for a couple of hours after breakfast, unless the weather's really bad. You can have a bath and sort through the clothes Lucius sent and the things I've bought while I'm out. Figure out what else you think you'll need. I'll fix an early lunch when we get back, and then I'll visit the book stores while you pick up the rest of your things."

"How long do you think we'll be here?" Hermione asked, trying to keep her tone light.

"How long is a piece of string?" Snape responded. "Albus and I never considered the possibility of the box changing allegiance. It was intended to give Voldemort an incentive to keep Muggle-born witches and wizards alive, instead of killing them outright. We anticipated that with Voldemort's death, any connections would be severed and the magic would revert to its rightful 'keeper'. I would like to think you would allow enough time to find a less _final_ solution, but I admit that it's probably going to amount to reading everything we can find on channelling and flows of magical energy and hoping that somewhere in there we find the needle in the haystack."

Hermione snorted. "How long I allow you depends on how long you're willing to pay my mortgage, and how long I can take as a leave of absence before they fire me."

"What about the wedding?"

"What about it?" Hermione retorted defensively.

"I would imagine that there will come a point where sending letters issuing instructions will fail to meet the necessary requirements."

"Oh," Hermione sighed her relief. "I thought you were going to give me a hard time about marrying Ron."

"Whereas I assumed that you would take my disapprobation as read. A person would have to be a blinkered moron not to be aware that Weasley is far from worthy of you. You are not an idiot. Therefore, I assume you know this and choose to ignore it anyway."

"Ron's not _that_ bad."

"If _that_ is the blushing bride's most resounding endorsement, then I believe my point is already proven. Nevertheless, if we don't find a way to break the connection before you need to make your arrangements, I will... bow out and let you go back to your orange-haired stick insect."

"Oh, no you don't. It's alright for you, flinging power around like Merlin himself, but if you think you're going to get away with saying, 'Well, we tried,' and packing me off to Ron like a squib, you can forget it, mister!" Hermione seethed. "You broke me, and you're stuck with me until you fix me, no matter how long it takes."

"It's the beginning of March now. If the Prophet is to be believed, which I admit it seldom is, your wedding is set for the beginning of August. We, unfortunately, will need to vacate this place before the second week in June. I believe my Gringott's vault should be equal to the task of compensating you for your loss of earnings between now and then. If, by that point, we haven't found an answer, I think it will be time for you to return to the Department of Mysteries and your Mr Weasley, but I have faith that it shouldn't come to that." 

He rose from the table, taking both their empty plates and his empty mug over to the sink, and beginning to tidy the kitchen.

Hermione wanted to ask what he meant, but he seemed as remote as the surface of the moon, so she drank the rest of her tea and took her mug over to him when she finished.

"If you run the water for your bath, I'll heat it before I take Bowie out."

She placed her hand on his arm, keeping it there until he lifted his head to look at her. "Thank you... for everything. It would have been a lot easier for you to take off on your own. I appreciate that you didn't."

The moment seemed to stretch. Two people, barely touching, practically strangers, but somehow each held in place.

Then she gave an embarrassed smile and took her hand away, her cheeks feeling unusually warm as she separated her clothes, hair products and tampons from the food shopping and took them to her room.

  


* * *

  


Hermione looked up from _'Channelling: A Study by Frances Cadwallader'_ when she heard the back door open. She picked up her empty mug and went to meet the wanderers.

"A bit blowy out there?" she asked, noting the professor's normally lank hair had arranged itself in a rather more windswept fashion.

"Bow-ie, stay!" Snape murmured in a slightly threatening tone. "Sorry, he knows better than to trail through the house when he's a mess, but he likes to say hello." He took out his wand and performed some nonverbal charm that left the dog dry and fluffy again. Snape removed his own jacket and hung it on the back of the kitchen door and then ran both hands through his hair until it fell back into its usual style. "I see the clothes fit?"

"For the most part," she agreed, though her shoulders squirmed, as she leant over to greet the dog. "I'm not convinced the bra was the size it said it was, but it'll do until I can get something else. Do you want a coffee? I'm not much with building fires without magic, but I managed to keep the one from this morning going."

Snape darted a glance at her through the curtains of his hair, as if wondering why she was offering. "Tea would be acceptable, if it's not too much trouble."

"I think I can manage that. Go and put on some dry clothes and I'll have it ready by the time you come out."

"Thanks, but I'll wait and have a shower after the tea."

Hermione chuckled. "I'm not planning to poison you, you know." She placed the kettle onto the metal arm built into the hearth and swung it over the flames.

"I never said you were, though from your point of view it could be the most expedient way to correct the situation."

"I've seen far too much death to choose it just because it's expedient. Now tell me where you went and I'll tell you what a crashing bore Frances Cadwallader is."

Snape shrugged. "We just followed the track along the cliffs to the next village and came back along the road." He took a seat at the dining room table, his hands dropping to Bowie's neck as if without thought when the dog padded over and put his chin on Snape's knee. 

"And this is a normal thing for you?" Hermione asked as she spooned coffee into her own mug and dropped a teabag into Snape's. "Not being here I mean, but being able to go for these long walks."

"It's an advantage of being self-employed." 

"I thought you were retired." She felt the spear of his attention as clearly as if she had been looking straight at him rather than at the kitchen table. "Not _like a pensioner_ retired," she quickly added, "just _I don't want to be a teacher and I don't need to_ retired."

"In _that_ sense, then I suppose I _am_ retired. I have yet to join the ranks of the independently wealthy, however, and still have to earn my daily bread, present circumstances not withstanding." 

"It sounds... peaceful."

"Granger, if you mean boring, _say_ boring."

Hermione turned to him. "I _mean_ peaceful, Snape. I enjoy my job, but sometimes I feel like there's not a lot of time around the edges just for being me. I have a back yard with a dozen planters, and Luna had to call in Neville to do a rescue mission on those. I'm not cut out to be Molly Weasley, but I wish I could have a challenging job without it dictating everything else about my life. You sound as if you've found a balance."

"I had... until you unearthed that blasted box from wherever it had been hidden for the last twenty five years." His tone switched abruptly to something far more brisk and professorial. "And I believe you owe me your opinion of Ms Cadwallader."

"Airy fairy wishy washy hocus pocus," Hermione provided as she took the steaming kettle from the flames. "Somehow, I don't think standing on the meeting point of three ley lines at the full moon after performing a ritual cleansing is going to be the key to our problem."

It could have been a cough, but Hermione was almost convinced it was a laugh.

"No, Miss Granger, I don't believe it will." 

  


* * *

  


"No, I'm sorry, Granger, but it won't do."

Hermione raked her own reflection in the mirror before meeting Snape's eyes in a defiant glare. "You've changed my hair. You've made my skin darker. You made my eyes darker. I could pass for Parvati Patil's cousin. What do you want to change now?"

"Granger, use the brain cells you were born with. We're supposed to be staying low key. If you walk down Diagon Alley like that every single male under fifty is going to make it his business to find out who you are, and not a few of the married ones." Snape gave another couple of sharp flicks.

Hermione felt her nose lengthen. Then, there was an ache in her gums and as she ran her tongue over her top teeth, she realised that the front two were getting larger and being forced forward. "Snape, you're a bathtard!" 

"You'll get used to them."

"I better not!" she retaliated. "That settles it, though."

"What?"

"Sit!" She grabbed a towel from the rail and pushed Snape back towards the edge of the bath, swathing his shoulders with the cloth once he stumbled into a sitting position. "You mesth with my teeth. I cut your hair." She grabbed his wand from his hand.

"You shouldn't use magic," Snape warned. "If you collapse, I'll leave them that way."

"Just you watch me," Hermione retorted.

Snape's eyes widened comically as six-inch strands fell down his front, but Hermione made sure she left his fringe long enough for him to hide his eyes behind it. Then she cut it at an angle over his ears and pulled it out to the side in sections to layer it through. "It doesn't have to be a work of art, woman. I'll grow it back as soon as we get home." After about ten minutes, she was happy, and Snape was practically ready to explode if he had to sit still any longer. 

"Alright. It's done," she announced, trying to push some stubborn strands into a side parting, despite their decades of training to separate at the centre.

"And _how_ do you feel? Don't bluff, Miss Granger. If I think you're lying I'm prepared to use Legilimency. On a scale of one to ten with one being the point where you collapse on the ground and ten being how you wake up on your best ever day?"

"You mean you haven't notisthed yet that I'm not a morning person? And you got the memo saying I hate you, right?"

"That is hardly news, Granger! Just answer the question."

Hermione scowled back at him, but she knew it was a valid question and that they both had to deal with her new limits. "Four... ish," she admitted.

"Does that really mean three, by any chance?"

"Alright three, but a walking, talking, breathing three."

"And before you did the spell?"

"Six, maybe five and half."

Snape's upper lip lifted at one corner. The matching eyebrow rose to keep his lip company. "And still you had to try."

"Oh quit it, Snape. It's a nothing spell and you know it. Barely more than a Levitation. On a normal day, I wouldn't even feel any difference." 

"If it were a normal day, Granger, neither of us would be here." Snape pulled the towel away, and grabbing his wand, began to add his own differences to his appearance as he continued to berate Hermione: his hair turned a non-descript brown, his eyes lightened to a pale grey, his teeth became whiter, if not any straighter, and his skin, though still pale, turned more pinkish than yellow. Lastly, his nose straightened, turning up slightly at the end, and his lips became fuller. "Do try not to do any permanent damage to yourself _before_ we clear my name. A drooling vegetable doesn't make a credible witness, even if she's a drooling vegetable with her magic intact."

Half an hour later, they parted ways at the back of the Leaky Cauldron. He opened up the archway to Diagon Alley and then pressed his wand into her hand. "Two hours," he reminded her. "If you don't meet me in Flourish and Blott's, then I'll come back here. Do not even attempt to activate the archway if you feel any more drained than you are now." He gave her a curt nod and loped off, somehow looking awkward in jeans and a jacket instead of his billowing robes.

Hermione tucked his wand away in her sleeve, all too aware that Snape was walking into hostile territory on his own and weaponless, without even so much as the armour of his reputation to protect him. She wasn't the only one who needed to be careful. 

  


* * *

  


_7th March_

 _Dear Mum and Dad,_

 _I know it's only been a couple of days since my last letter, but I wanted to write to you all again in case you are suffering from the same delusions Ron appears to be under (and also to tell you and Dad not to start putting up 'Lost' posters and offering a reward for Escher and Kitty, but I'll get to that). I'm sure that you give me rather more credit for sheer stubbornness than he does. Nevertheless, for the record I reiterate I left the hospital of my own free will, with no more coercion on Professor Snape's behalf than a statement of the facts from his point of view._

 _Do not worry about me. The professor has found us a lovely place for our seclusion. I can't say any more because even though wizarding law now includes Ron and Harry, I think the professor is right to feel that he is more likely to be given the benefit of the doubt if my power has been restored when we settle matters with the Aurory._

 _I know you don't take the Prophet yourselves, but Ron and Harry have both been quoted there saying some terrible things about Professor Snape, and I hope they haven't repeated any of them to you. I have come to no greater harm at the Professor's hands than being scared witless as we made our escape. BTW I have already mentioned this to Harry directly, but if you see him, do tell him again that trying to knock out the person who was keeping us both from plummeting seventy feet did not make him very popular._

 _I doubt that the Professor and I will ever live in peace together. We are both far too fond of getting our own way, or perhaps I should say we are both far too fond of being seen to get our own way. Witness the point in case with Escher and Kitty. As soon as Professor Snape brought his dog (and please tell Ron to stop spreading ridiculous rumours and that Bowie was born that way) to our hideout, I told him I wanted Escher and Kitty. He replied that it was far too dangerous as the Aurors would be watching you and the house. He said I could have another cat, but that no way, no how, was he going to run the risks he would need to in order to get my own cats, and yet the next morning, there they were hiding under the furniture in the kitchen. They still haven't come out, I'm afraid, despite all my best efforts to entice them, or if they have come out to eat the salmon I put out, they did it under cover of darkness. I'm more inclined to think Bowie got there first. But I'm sure once Esh and Kitty have had a couple of days to adjust to their new surroundings, they'll rule the roost. You know the old saying, 'cats for places, dogs for faces'. Anyway, I tried to thank the Professor, but he just looked at me as if I was mad, as if Escher and Kitty found their own way there._

 _I know that he stands to lose even more than I do if we fail to work this out, but really he has been far kinder than he has any need to be. He may not have considered before the first time he left me alone that I couldn't easily heat water for a bath any more, but he's done it without my having to ask every morning since. He does all the cooking and washing up, though he'll allow me to chop some token carrots or onions if I offer. I pretend I don't notice, and he pretends he's just as stern and bad tempered as he was when I was a pupil. He's also officially notified Gringott's to transfer money from his account to cover my mortgage and bills until we get this sorted out. He says it's his fault I don't have a wage coming in, and much as I'd like to play the independent woman card, the truth is he's right and I can't afford to argue._

 _We haven't had any luck with the research yet, though we bought enough books the other day to keep us at it for weeks. We not only cleaned out the relevant section in Flourish and Blott's, but we Portkeyed to San Francisco, only don't tell Ron or Harry that. Anyway, Fortescue's is THE biggest English language magical book shop in the world. I probably didn't appreciate it as much as I might because we basically finished our day's shopping in London (in disguise, of course, and believe me I was not happy when a certain wand happy professor decided I needed my original teeth back) and dropped off our books and our owls and my clothes, and then we Apparated to this ruined abbey on top of a cliff somewhere so that if MLE caught on about the illegal Portkey they wouldn't trace it back to where we were staying and then Portkeyed to San Francisco, and suddenly we're killing time drinking coffee in a diner waiting for Fortescue's to open for the day, when to me it feels like five o'clock at night. It really was HUGE, though. I'd love to go back when I could just relax and spend the whole day browsing._

 _Basically, I think we're still settling in, but we should have everything we need now, so except for picking up food every so often we shouldn't have any more distractions from trying to find a cure._

 _Oh! I nearly forgot. So far I haven't heard anything from Ron or Harry or Luna. I would like to think that they've tried to send messages by owl, but that their birds haven't been able to penetrate the wards on the place where we're living. Anyway, you already know that (not counting that five minutes in St. Mungo's) the last time I saw Ron I told him he should think hard about whether he wants to go ahead with the wedding so that we could discuss it. In light of what's happened, I reiterated in my first letter to him that if he decided not to go ahead, then I wouldn't hold him to his promise._

 _I know that right now he's clinging desperately to the idea that I'm somehow not responsible for my choice to leave, but if he comes to accept that I did go of my own free will, then he'll probably take that just as hard. I've tried to explain to him that it's not a case of choosing Professor Snape rather than him, or trusting Snape rather than him. It's that the only way to fix this is for Snape and me to work on it together. I've tried to make him see that if Snape and I can find a cure, then Ron and I might have a chance, whereas if I had stayed and I never got my power back, I don't think Ron and I could ever have worked._

 _The thing is, in the eyes of Ron's mother, and probably in Ron's eyes, too, if they believe I wasn't kidnapped, then by leaving with Snape I might as well hang a big scarlet A on my chest. All of which is a longwinded way of saying that if Ron contacts you to say the wedding is off, then go ahead and cancel everything. If he doesn't cancel, then we still have to have that big discussion once I get my power back, so just keep everything in a holding pattern._

 _The really silly thing is Snape still has much the same opinion of Ron that he did in school, which is only logical since that was the last he saw of him, and he's been quite open about saying I must have taken leave of my senses, which is sort of a compliment coming from him, but instead of telling him the truth, I end up defending Ron. I'm less and less certain that I can make a relationship with Ron work, but I did promise Ron that if he made an effort I would give him a chance, and it's not really fair if I bad mouth him or our relationship to the world._

 _I'm sorry. I guess, even though I tell myself there's no point in worrying about Ron, I still do. The truth is that I have to see this situation through and see whether the person who emerges on the other side is the woman and witch I've become accustomed to seeing in the mirror, or if it's another woman entirely. Professor Snape has promised that he will see I get my power back, and he has kept promises much more difficult than this one, but until that happens or until I know with absolute certainty that all hope is gone, I can't return._

 _Your loving daughter,_

 _Hermione_


	4. The End of the Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time is running out for Hermione and Severus to find a solution. Frustrations rise and tempers fray.

  
  


Hermione awoke, gasping to regain her breath as she pushed Bowie off her chest. "What's up with—" She stopped dead as her last word was drowned out in a thunderous roar and the room was bathed in a blinding flash of blue that appeared to have its source in the very air. 

Shock made her freeze in place momentarily. However, it ruled her actions for just a second before she scrambled from her bed, Bowie slinking at her heels. Another crackling charge lit the professor's room just as she reached its door, burning the scene into her retinas.

The twin beds had been pushed together, presumably so that Bowie could be next to his master without lying on top of him, but in his sleep it seemed that Severus had kicked most of the covers from his bed onto the other. Only a sheet covered him, and that was tangled around him, clinging damply to every line of his form from the ribs downward. He moaned, his back arching upward as there was another resounding crack of thunder and the lightning flared. 

Hermione couldn't help comparing the sight with her fiancé's body. Snape never had grown his hair back after their shopping trip, saying he blended better with the village Muggles as it was and when he returned to Upper Flagley he would go back to doing it himself again. The new cut made his features seem less severe somehow. His body, though, seemed to be fashioned from naught but bone and corded muscle. Ron, having his father's build, would probably never be fat, but when it came to food he seemed to eat more than ever, as if he had a need to compensate for his occasional deprivation on the Horcrux hunt, and there was already a softness about him. The next flash illuminated the hands that she had become accustomed to seeing in the act of writing or chopping ingredients, twisting into the sheet under him. Even the thunder he had unwittingly created could not drown out the cry that was drawn from his lips as rain began to fall.

"Lily!"

Like a slap across the face, the name brought home to Hermione just how far her actions intruded on the privacy of a man who kept even his closest friends at a distance. She made a grab for the door's handle and drew it closed. With her free hand she pounded on the wood as loudly as she could, calling out as she did so. "Snape! Professor! Are you awake? Snape?"

She paused and waited.

"Snape—"

"Yes, Granger, I am _now_ awake. Stop fussing, let the dog back in, and go back to your room."

Hermione felt the heat rise in her cheeks as she opened the door just an inch. She circled around Bowie, keeping her eyes averted, even as the dog nosed the gap wider. The sun was creeping over the horizon before she slept again. 

  


* * *

  


"I don't know why I keep paying for this rag," Severus muttered after he tossed the Prophet aside.

"Because it pays to know what we'll be up against when the time comes. Like it or not, the majority of wizards allow Rita Skeeter to shape their opinions," Hermione answered. "It's been more than a week. I did think she would have found a way of putting the blame onto me by now, rather than keeping the victim angle going for so long. I hate to think what you must have done to offend her."

"I declined an invitation," Severus answered with barely a trace of a grimace. 

"Are we talking about the sort of invitation I think we're talking about?" Hermione poured first Severus's tea and then her own. 

"It was rather vaguely worded."

"How vague could it be when turning it down made her this pissed off at you?" Hermione asked. 

"Her invitation may have been vague. My refusal was emphatic."

"I imprisoned her in a jam jar and forced her not to publish anything for a whole year," said Hermione with a snort. "What could you do that was worse than that?" 

"You really must live up to your reputation as a know-it-all, mustn't you?" Severus sighed. "I told her to get her tasteless clothes back on before she put me off blancmange for life, and take her flabby arse out of my quarters or the next time she used her Animagus form to circumvent my wards, I would pull her legs off one by one and crush her still living body to use in my Potions."

Hermione grinned. "You have an evil tongue, Severus Snape."

"Only my tongue, Granger?" Snape growled. "I must be slipping."

"Well, an evil tongue and a wicked sense of humour. The jury is still out on your heart." She picked up the discarded newspaper and scowled at the artist's diagram that showed how Bowie was supposedly a canine Inferius. "At least as far as most people are concerned." 

"Let me guess. You believe that after ten whole days you know me better than most?"

She folded the newspaper in half and placed it back on the table, staring right back into those eyes that could hide so much. "Snape, I've seen you with that dog. I know you can nurse a grudge longer than anyone else I've ever known. I know that you would probably rather die than ever have anyone describe you as nice, but I don't think anyone could see you with Bowie and think you're incapable of love."

"You are perilously close to losing your hot water privileges," Severus warned.

"You'll have forgiven me by the time we get back from our walk," Hermione announced with rather more assurance than she really felt.

 _"We_ get back from _our_ walk?" 

"Well, I can hardly make use of my gym membership, can I? And if my arse gets flabby, precedent suggests you'll throw me out."

"I would have thrown that bloodsucking tick out even if she had the body of Aphrodite herself. Circumstances don't exactly allow me a choice when it comes to you."

"Seriously," Hermione added in a softer voice, "I'd like to come, but if you need a bit of time alone..."

"If I need time alone, I have a room." Snape conceded rather grudgingly. "That doesn't mean I'll put up with inane chatter."

"No, sir, I wouldn't expect you to. I'll get my shoes." 

  


* * *

  


Days passed in the same routine. Snape would let out whichever of their two owls were home so they could hunt. He would make breakfast and send Bowie in to wake Hermione when it was almost ready, and she would feed the animals. They would check the headlines in the Prophet, if it arrived in time. Then, they would tidy up and go out for a walk with Bowie, picking up a Muggle newspaper at some point on their route, and sometimes stopping in at a general store in Portsoy or Cullen to pick up a few perishables. When they came back, he would have a mug of tea and she would have coffee, picking over the rest of the Prophet and the Muggle news. She would run her bath and he would heat it for her before he took a shower. 

After that, they would go into research mode. He preferred the escritoire in the living room and made notes using quill, ink and parchment. She liked to lounge on the sofa, where she could just occasionally allow her mind to wander to the sea view, with an A4 pad and a Parker rollerball. Escher and Kitty quickly learned to treat both their efforts with equal disdain if note-taking got in the way of a feline claiming a warm lap to sleep on. They would break for lunch, eating it at the patio table in the garden if the weather was clement enough.

Around five, they would take Bowie for a short walk to a semi-private beach just ten minutes from the cottage, throwing sticks or a Frisbee for him to chase or just watching him swim or play chicken with the waves. If it stayed dry, they would wait until the sun was low in the sky to pick their way back up the cliff path. Snape had cautioned Hermione against swimming herself until at least May.

Hermione would let the owls out again and give what assistance she could while Severus cooked dinner. While he washed up, she would make another pot of tea and feed Bowie, Escher and Kitty again. In the evenings, Hermione would take Snape's position at the escritoire until she had written a letter or two ready to send off when the birds came back from their evening hunt, and they would both raid Minerva's selection of Muggle novels or skim through such periodicals or journals as happened to make it through the wards.

Snape would normally go out alone when Hermione retired to her room, sometimes for an hour, sometimes longer. At first, she found herself listening for the sound of the croft's back door, but soon she took it for granted that he would come back, and would be asleep within minutes of her head hitting the pillow, lulled by the wash of the waves, the salt air and regular exercise. 

It was during one of their breaks at the beach, as Snape drew on one of his few cigarettes for the day, that Hermione finally brought up the thunderstorm. "Snape?"

"What, Granger?"

"You know when I woke you up the other night, what was happening?"

Snape's eyebrows lifted so high they were all but invisible under his fringe. "For Merlin's sake, woman, haven't you and Weasley been together long enough for you to know what you saw, or does Molly fit _all_ of her brood with chastity belts until they're legally married?"

"Very funny!" Hermione answered with her best imitation of a Snape sneer. "Let's just say that even Harry's Ginny dreams didn't change the local weather. I don't care who or what you dream about. I _am_ concerned for both of us, when the results are so potentially destructive. I know it doesn't happen every night. I wondered if there was a reason..."

"Of course there's a reason. What do you think happens when one body tries to contain the power of two extraordinarily gifted magic users?"

"I worked out that much all by myself, Snape. I meant was there a reason it happened that night and not any other?"

Snape's scowl grew even darker if that were possible. "I miscalculated. I thought that the new wand had rectified the problem, whereas with hindsight it was all the long distance side-along Apparitions and Portkeys which had depleted my power to manageable levels on our first couple of nights here."

Hermione let out a sigh, and her shoulders slumped in apparent relief.

"What did you think, you silly girl?

"So when you go out you just Apparate around a bit to use up your excess power?"

"No, I fly _._ What did you think I was doing?"

"I was worried that you might be taking Dreamless Sleep or some other Potion to stop the dreams."

"Yes, because all we need now on top of everything else is for me to become an addict!"

"Well, exactly."

Snape's voice softened. "No, Granger, I am not going to degenerate in front of you like Dr Jekyll until you're cohabiting with a raving monster."

"Good." Hermione pretended an acute interest in a shell next to the toe of her boot. "Between losing Bowie and the owls and the way the cats will sulk, it's going to feel enough like a divorce when we go our separate ways without all the name calling and dramatics."

She pushed off from the rock she had been leaning against and began to stroll along the firm, damp sand left by the outgoing tide.

Severus watched her go, smoke curling up unheeded from his cigarette as it burned down. 

  


* * *

  


"Someone's in a good mood this morning," Hermione remarked as she opened the section of the dresser where they kept the pet food, taking out a couple of sachets for Escher and Kitty.

Severus stopped humming 'The March of the Toreadors' and then shrugged. "It seems at least one of your friends knows you better than the others, or she has a brain, albeit a rather warped one, one of the two." 

"Luna isn't warped!" Hermione insisted, as she nudged Bowie away from the cats' bowls with her leg, so that they could get in. 

"And yet you cunningly discerned exactly which of your cadre of troublemakers I meant," Snape observed with a sly grin. 

"What's she done?"

"More investigative legwork than the entire department of Aurors."

"Snape, don't tell me that you have a subscription to the Quibbler?" 

"I never got around to cancelling it after the Conflict ended," he admitted. "It normally has a certain amount of entertainment value." 

Hermione quickly emptied a huge portion of the previous night's chicken stew into Bowie's bowl and stirred in his daily Potions before setting it down on the floor and topping up all the animals' water bowls. She slid into her seat at the dining table and perused the Quibbler's front cover.

"'Aurory barking up the wrong tree! Residents of Upper Flagley contradict recent Ministry claims about Severus Snape.' Have you read it?" Hermione asked.

"Not yet. I wanted to be fully awake before I had to deal with anything Miss Lovegood wrote. It's entirely possible the girl will condemn the M.L.E.'s theories only to have come up with something even more preposterous."

"Luna's very good at what she does, believe it or not," Hermione averred. "Besides, I may have suggested a few lines of investigation." She flipped quickly to page six to find the full story. "'Hieronymus Braithwaite, local Apothecary, confirmed that the dog some at the Ministry claim is an Inferius is in fact the former Hogwarts' headmaster's pet. "Been comin' here regular since he moved to't village an' t'must be nigh on three year he's had t'beast. Never see him out fer 'is walk without it."' Well, that should help a bit. 

"'Thaddeus Ainstee, newsagent and regular at 'The White Rose', a pub where Snape has been known to drink, was even more helpful. He happened to remember Snape once mentioning where he had procured the dog. A covert visit to the old records department at Keighley's Cat and Dog Shelter allowed the Quibbler to confirm that Severus Snape adopted an animal described as a five-year-old border collie cross called Patches whose eye-colour was listed as blue/brown.' Well, that should put paid to the Prophet claiming that the blue eye has to do with it losing pigmentation after death. 

"'The Quibbler has also been able to confirm that Snape's supposed hostage, Hermione Granger, has been writing daily to various friends and relatives since she left St. Mungo's in Snape's company. We have been able to acquire several of Miss Granger's letters and have consulted both renowned seer, Athelas Greystoke, and an expert Muggle graphologist (or handwriting specialist, sometimes used by Muggle Law Enforcement authorities) who have both confirmed that the letters were indeed written by Miss Granger, and that, contrary to claims made by her fiancé, Ronald Bilius Weasley, trainee Auror, in both an official and personal capacity, she was 'extremely unlikely' to have written them under coercion. Weasley and his brother-in-law, Harry Potter (who has publicly refused to speculate on the situation) have now been transferred onto other cases. Officially, the hunt for Miss Granger and Professor Snape is being scaled down now that all immediate leads have been followed up, but unofficial sources say that Weasley and Potter were taken from the case because of their inability to function impartially as part of the investigative team.'"

"I'm sure that will have made Savage flavour of the month in the Weasley household," Snape remarked. "Not to mention certain people not too far from here once it turns out they were right to get rid of them." 

Hermione grimaced and pointedly began reading again as Snape set down a plate overflowing with fried food in the centre of the table and began to choose a selection from it for himself. "'We were also able to confirm that Miss Granger has officially been granted a paid leave of absence of up to six months by Gerald Croaker, her superior in the Department of Mysteries, to allow her to recover after a work-related incident involving an item under investigation by the department. The Department of Mysteries now believes that the item in question was made by Professor Snape under the direction of Albus Dumbledore at the height of You Know Who's first rise to power. The item was potentially central to a plan by the leader of the renowned Order of the Phœnix to deter against the wholesale murder of Muggle-born witches and wizards. After You Know Who was struck down in Godric's Hollow, the item was thought to be lost or destroyed. It is now obvious that it somehow fell into the keeping of the Lestranges around this time, and that Professor Snape had no way of knowing that it would eventually resurface in such a disastrous way.' Well that'll set the cat among the pixies." Hermione closed the magazine and set it down on the table with a smug smile. 

"Pointed her in the right direction?" Snape asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'd wager that a good third of that article is taken word for word from one of your letters, and the only reason I'm giving her credit for the other two thirds is that you wouldn't know the rest of it until now, but if Lovegood knew what a graphologist was before last week, I'm the king of the gnome people."

"I _may_ have made a suggestion here and there," Hermione conceded, stabbing the last fried potato scone with her fork and adding it to her plate before Snape could reconsider and take it, too. 

"Well played, Granger. I'll make a Slytherin of you yet." 

Hermione snorted. "Most Slytherins wouldn't have known what a graphologist was either." 

"No, Miss Granger, Most Slytherins wouldn't _admit_ to knowing what a graphologist was." 

  


* * *

  


Hermione closed another book with an unnecessarily loud bang, causing Severus to twist in his chair and scowl in her direction. "You can't tell me that I'm the only one who's getting fed up with reading and reading and finding nothing that seems to shed any light on our problem."

"Who says that _I_ have found nothing to shed any light?" Severus asked, his tone deliberately bland. 

"Your pile of discarded books is just as big as mine," Hermione argued.

"That is as may be, Miss Granger. However, I have found a few texts which could prove relevant."

"How—"

"Because I ensured those books which deal with the Darker aspects of the subject and those concerning solutions which might be considered morally questionable fell to me," Severus elucidated. "It's bad enough that I'm responsible for you losing your magic without tainting your soul, or allowing you to pay a price so high that you regret it for the rest of your life."

"And _you_ get to unilaterally decide these options don't even merit discussion?" Hermione accused. "Not to mention letting me read a hundred books that you knew were completely pointless!"

"No knowledge is completely pointless—"

"You didn't read _those_ books!"

"No, but I paid for them. I wouldn't have bought them if I didn't think there was some possibility they would prove useful. And, yes, _I_ decided certain options don't even merit discussion, not until every other possibility is ruled out."

"In case you haven't noticed, Snape, we're running out of books here," Hermione argued. "Another four or five days, maybe another week at most, and we'll have ruled out those other possibilities." 

"No, Granger, another four or five days and we look elsewhere for books. Older ones."

"Oh yeah? And where are we going to get those?"

"I thought we would start with Alexandria." 

"Show off!"

"Gryffindors show off, Miss Granger. Slytherins simply have style." 

  


* * *

  


_5th April_

 _Dear Mum and Dad,_

 _It seems incredible that I've been here for a month. You would think that I would have cabin fever by now with only the professor for company, but despite the reason for it all, it's actually been a very restful time. That's not to say that I don't miss you both, or that I won't be thinking of dad cremating innocent beef burgers on the barbecue over the Easter weekend. I will. I might even sacrifice a few of my own to keep him company in spirit if not in body._

 _We've been working away on our research, but so far the professor hasn't been able to find any texts that cover the same material as the notes Professor Dumbledore loaned to him back when he originally made the puzzle, and while he says he's found at least one potential line of investigation, he claims it's too wicked for my innocent eyes. And, yes, I am rolling those supposedly innocent eyes as I speak, even if it is just a tiny bit endearing that he thinks he has to protect me. What does he think the Ministry were paying me for? Unfortunately, without my magic, I can't exactly break the wards he has on his own personal 'Restricted Section'. He says that if we don't find another way to do it in the next couple of months or so, then he'll discuss all the options with me, but there are certain things he won't even consider unless he's sure that there's no alternative._

 _Of course, if he wasn't so stubborn, then we wouldn't have had an excuse to—_

 _I better not say. I really, really want to tell you what we've been doing through the day for the last three or four days, but I don't trust the boys to not interfere if they somehow found out, and it wouldn't be exactly difficult for them to intercept your letters. Let's just say that if Westworld was a concept that really existed rather than just something Michael Crichton imagined, I would probably have happily paid a fortune to pretend to be exactly where I've been for the last few days, and we're still far from exhausting the possibilities._

 _We have another plan for getting our hands on research materials, and we'll try that soon. If it works, we might be able to open up another avenue of communication, but time will tell. For now, the only way we have of knowing what's going on in the wider world is what we read in the press, and the Prophet seems to have decided we're not headline-worthy any longer. As far as we can tell, Luna and Neville both believe the letters I've been sending are genuine; Harry either doesn't know what to believe, or is too much the Minister-in-Waiting to commit himself to one side or the other; Ron is convinced that Snape is evil, but he can't work out whether he kidnapped me in an effort to play Bothwell to my Mary Queen of Scots, to deprive Ron of his bride, to cut out my brain and use it in Potions or as a human guinea pig for some Dark magic; Molly seems to think that her poor little boy isn't getting a fair deal and that I should come home so that she can nag me about what a bad fiancée I've been in person rather than in Witch Weekly; Arthur's quoted as saying it's nobody's business other than mine, Ron's and Severus's, and that if I'm not pressing charges, then it's not up to anyone else to interfere, which I think means he believes me, too._

 _I suppose Ron made such a show of protesting my innocence and Snape's guilt in the first instance, that he'd rather keep denouncing all evidence to the contrary, than publicly admit he got it all totally wrong._

 _I miss you both,_

 _All my love,_

 _Hermione_

  


* * *

  


"How's this?" Hermione enquired. "'From Spartan's Child to Moon Girl, Meet me where I last embraced your flaming passion. Same day. Eight.'"

"Spartan's Child referring to Hermione, daughter of King Menelaus, I assume. Yes, Lovegood _should_ be able to work that out if she doesn't know it already," Severus conceded, "and Moon Girl is necessarily obvious in order to gain her attention. As to the rest, I'm not sure I _want_ to know."

Hermione aimed a kick at him under the table. "You are almost as juvenile as Ron and Harry. Luna has a little bit of a crush on a redhead who attended my engagement party. She was there when I gave him a goodnight hug. If we're really lucky her dad might bring it to her attention before it even gets published."

"And is your beloved fiancé aware that she has a fondness for one of his brothers?"

"I never said it was one of his brothers, and no." 

"I can't imagine her with the groom-to-be unless it was a pity fuck. She's too good a judge of character. And it's hardly going to be Arthur or Mundungus Fletcher." Snape grimaced. "At least I _hope_ not, though with the difference in ages there was between her mother and her father—" He discontinued his line of speculation at Hermione's malevolent glare. With false brightness he suggested, "What have we got to lose?" 

"The cost of the advert and pizza for three at Da Vinci's." Hermione ripped the back page from March's Quibbler and began filling in the submission form to place an advert in the magazine's April Personals column. 

  


* * *

  


"We have a reservation," Severus announced in his mousy-haired, straight-nosed persona. "Table for three in the name of Lovegood."

"Certainly, sir," the maître d' agreed. "Your companion is already here."

Suddenly overcome by nerves, Hermione grabbed at Severus's hand. 

"It's _your_ friend," he muttered under his breath, but he squeezed her fingers briefly before he fell into step behind their host. 

Hermione took a deep breath and followed in their wake.

As they approached their table, Luna rose to her feet, and before Hermione knew it, she was wrapped in her friend's arms and the maître d' was going back to his usual post. 

She found herself holding the blonde as if she were holding on to a lifeline. "Oh, Luna, it's so good to see you again!"

Luna shifted to hold Hermione's arms, looking her friend up and down with her customary winsome smile. "You look happy," she observed.

Hermione's eyes darted to Severus before returning to Luna. "I am."

Severus snorted. Then he drew out a chair and gestured for Hermione to sit. 

Luna seated herself again opposite Hermione before he could do the same for her, and he took the chair at Hermione's side.

"Good evening, Miss Lovegood."

Luna fixed her attention on the professor, as if assessing him in her own curiously detached manner. "Good evening, Severus." 

For an instant Snape's face registered surprise, but he swallowed any reprimand he might have planned, instead moving his wand hand under the table to cast a discreet Muffliato. 

"Tell us everything!" Hermione demanded. "We haven't heard anything other than what's been in the papers. Have you been really annoyed at me for disappearing?"

"You didn't disappear," Luna said, her expression puzzled. "You wrote me all those lovely letters."

"Oh, Luna..." Hermione was suddenly overcome by a wash of warmth for her friend. "You have to be the most charitable person I know. I'm sure Ron and Harry aren't taking it anything like as well."

"Harry is just worried about you — not because you're with the professor, at least not most of the time. He gets a bit confused now and again, I think, but most of the time he trusts you both. It's more that he finds it hard to do nothing."

Severus gave another snort, lifting his fingers to his lips as a waiter approached the table and he had to undo his spell so that they could order. 

Hermione waited until the waiter had gone to turn on Severus. "What's so funny?" she hissed. "That Harry finds it hard to stand by or that _you_ think he makes a habit of doing nothing?" 

"Both. He never had the slightest problem doing the least possible amount to get through on his schoolwork, but give him an opportunity to play the hero and he can't let it go, no matter whether there are others better suited to deal with the situation."

Hermione fumed as the waiter, who had just returned, poured Severus a sample of the house red and waited while he tasted it before filling all their glasses and disappearing again. "Well, it's not like you went out of your way to inspire his trust or to make him enjoy your subjects!" she added under her breath.

"I'm so sorry," Snape sneered, as Luna observed the other two, "but I didn't realise that I was supposed to ignore the rest of the class so that I could pander to the Chosen One, or that I was meant to blow my cover and get myself killed just so that a lazy ne'er-do-well could feel like he could come running to me to wipe his nose." 

"Harry's not his father, and he's _my_ friend."

"Really?" Snape asked. "Is he still, now that you can't help him with his homework? Or does he just come around to see if your boyfriend wants to go out and play or when he has a guilt attack?"

"That's not fair! Trainee Aurors have to study a lot, and he has to make time for Ginny, too."

"And who makes time for you?" Snape asked. "When you don't supposedly need rescuing, I mean."

"I do," Luna answered. "We're friends."

At this Snape gave the barest smile. "Yes, Miss Lovegood, I suppose you do." His eyes met Luna's straight on for the first time. "In fact, we very much hope you will." 

  


* * *

  


"Luna!" Hermione called out as Bowie raced ahead of her and Severus.

Luna rose from where she sat at the garden table, and tripped her way along the path until she met Bowie, crouching and greeting the dog in a whisper. "You're a wise old thing, aren't you?"

The dog set his right paw in her lap and whined softly.

"Wise and loving and quite as much of a rogue as your master." She leaned forward and pressed her lips to the fur on top of Bowie's nose. Then she rose and gave a smile as bright as her namesake, throwing herself into Hermione's arms. 

"You must have come straight from work," Hermione exclaimed, tossing her head to try to get her windblown curls out of her face without letting her friend go. "We were just down at the beach. I didn't think you'd be able to get here so early." 

"It's the weekend," Luna answered, "and I'm all yours. I brought as many books from the department library as I could."

Severus nodded a greeting. "Miss Lovegood. Didn't your parents teach you any manners, Granger? Show your guest to her room and help her settle in. I'll feed the ravening animal hordes and then get dinner. I'll call you when it's ready." He strode off at a brisk walk, Bowie trotting at his heels.

Hermione and Luna followed at a slower pace, Luna's eyes darting in every direction as she took in their surroundings.

"You never did say last week how Ron was taking all this," Hermione said hesitantly, as they detoured to pick up Luna's bag before they went in.

"I don't know," Luna admitted. "He still hasn't forgiven me for calling him an arse." 

"Still? You mean he's still sulking over something you said the night before I collapsed?"

"And you're surprised?" she asked. 

"I suppose not." Hermione bent down to pick up Luna's bag. She winced as she hefted it onto her shoulder and began the walk to the back door. "Have you got the whole library in here?"

"Only the books that I thought might be useful. Danny sends his love by the way. Gerald just says get your magic back and get yourself back to work. Even with the extension Charm on my bag, you didn't think I'd be able to pull that many books without anyone noticing, did you?"

"And they were okay with that?"

Luna gave a sad smile and shook her head. "You really don't have a clue how much we miss you, do you? We had to requisition in Aurors to finish the checks on the Lestranges' stuff on time, _and_ we're still finding stuff they misfiled or filled in incorrectly. And Gerald might technically be in charge, but you're sort of that middle gear wheel that makes everybody else fit together. You should ask for a raise when you get back. Assuming you _are_ coming back?"

Hermione stopped. "Of course I'm coming back — you do think I'm going to get my power back, don't you?"

"I think you're probably closer to the solution than you would ever believe," Luna remarked dreamily and then gave a wistful sigh. "Hermione, Ronald hasn't been staying in London since the news broke. According to Harry, he felt like his every move was being watched."

Now it was Hermione's turn to sigh. "It probably was. I didn't mean to make things so difficult for him. At least Molly will get a chance to 'feed him properly'."

"No." Luna grimaced. "He's staying at Shell Cottage."

"Where?" Hermione asked in a puzzled tone. "The room you and I shared is Victoire's now, and Gabrielle is staying with them while she's on secondment from the French Ministry so she's using the spare room."

Luna shrugged. "I only know that much because Ginny wasn't happy about it."

"Dare I ask what Ginny thinks?" Hermione asked, moving forward again.

"Ginny wants you to marry her husband's best friend," Luna answered as the two women made their way through the kitchen and into the corridor. "She wants you to be with Ronald, so that everything can balance. As long as you're with Ronald she can cope with the fact that Harry loves you almost as much as he loves her, because you're this perfect foursome. You can plan it so that you both have your kids at the same time and they'll grow up being as close as brothers and sisters instead of cousins and you'll all live happily ever after."

Hermione pushed open the door to the single room. "This is yours. There's a bathroom next door, but Snape uses that one, so I think you'll be safer sharing mine, which is the last door at the end of the hall. My bedroom is the door next to it, then Snape's room is in between and that's the living room through there." 

Luna went into the single room, bouncing on the bed to test the mattress. 

When Hermione wandered over to the window, she could feel Luna's eyes on her and she couldn't help wondering what she saw. She waited for Luna to say whatever was on her mind.

"So," Luna asked eventually, "if I give you your wand, will you be sensible or should I give it to Severus instead?"

  


* * *

  


"Miss Lovegood," Severus began when Hermione had taken herself off to the toilet. "I wonder if you would be so kind as to spare me a few minutes this evening after Miss Granger has retired. I know that you've had a long day and if it is inconvenient..."

Luna just smiled wistfully. "I can afford far more than a few minutes for someone who makes my best friend happy."

An emotion very like regret seemed to settle briefly on the professor's face, but by the time Hermione returned to the room, he gave an excellent impression of being immersed once more in one of the tomes Luna had brought. 

  


* * *

  


Luna waited until the sounds of Hermione performing her toilette had ended and the lamp in her bedroom no longer caused a sliver of light to peek beneath her door to rise from the armchair where she had been curled with a book. She made her way to the shelf which housed half a dozen crystal tumblers and a bottle of golden amber liquid whose label made it look more like an antiquated prescription than a mere beverage. "Chivas Brothers Cask Strength Edition, Strathisla Fourteen Year Old."

"I don't think my life would be worth living, if we touched that," Severus remarked.

"Oh I don't think Professor McGonagall would be stingy about a couple of measures," Luna argued. "She'd be really annoyed if we drank it _all,_ but it isn't as if it's unopened, and if she is I can buy her a bottle of something else."

"Who told you this was Minerva's cottage?" Severus demanded as Lovegood blithely uncorked the bottle and poured two single measures.

The woman turned and gave him such a strange look with her pale goggling eyes that Severus almost found himself having second thoughts about enlisting her help. She set one of the tumblers down on the escritoire by his right hand.

"Why, she told me, of course."

"You've talked to Minerva?" Severus asked in a shocked tone.

"Well, not in words, silly. I'm not one of her Gryffindors, so that might have attracted attention," Luna observed, "but anyone can hear her here. She's everywhere. Her magic is in every stone and every piece of furniture. You can't tell me that _you_ don't feel it." 

"I _may_ have felt something of the sort in the past, though I never thought of it as a magical property, more a sense of her belonging here and here being right for her," Severus admitted. "Of late, my magical senses have been somewhat overwhelmed by the combination of Miss Granger's magic and my own. It makes it rather difficult to pick up anything more subtle than an incoming Unforgivable without a great deal of concentration." 

Lovegood tilted her head to one side. "Yes, I suppose that would be a drawback."

"Miss Lovegood, I didn't ask for your time in order to discuss Minerva McGonagall. I have some business to take care of in case this situation does not end well. I have drawn up a will." He pulled open a drawer and extracted a piece of parchment folded concertina fashion. He lifted the top flap to show the ornate calligraphy that headed the piece of paper. 'The Last Will and Testament of Severus Snape.' "You need not, as yet, concern yourself as to its contents," he continued, "though I have taken the liberty of appointing both you and Longbottom as co-executors. Past versions named Lucius Malfoy in the role, but one never knows whether there might be some sort of red tape which might intrude upon him being able to perform such a duty, and I was favourably impressed by Mr Longbottom the last time I saw him, and by your concern for Miss Granger. I hope I do not impose too far upon your goodwill." 

"Hermione would be very upset with you, if she thought you meant to sacrifice your life in order to sever the bond between you."

"Then Miss Granger must never suspect. The youngest Mr Weasley can almost certainly be counted upon to do the honours if given sufficient provocation, but it would probably be more believable if I were to inadvertently bump into one of the Dark Lord's former followers, and if I were to be assassinated, then even my life insurance company would not quibble." 

"Professor—"

"Lovegood— Luna, I have made a promise to Miss Granger that I will set right what _I_ made wrong. Perhaps I did not seal that promise with an Unbreakable Vow, but that means neither that I took it lightly nor that I was unaware of the potential outcome. I know only two ways to return Miss Granger's power to her. Fate decrees that one of those two methods is neither viable nor palatable. The other only presents a problem if Miss Granger were to find out."

"Hermione isn't a believer in happy coincidence when men of your intelligence are involved, sir," Luna argued. "She's seen too much. She _will_ put the pieces together sooner rather than later, and if you think she would find your death more palatable than the other option, then it isn't just your magical senses that have been overwhelmed, it's all the others as well."

Severus snorted and waved away Luna's suggestion. "Luna, I do not, at this time, harbour a death wish, but I am not so selfish as to put forward a course of action that would not only fail in its intent, but put further obstacles in the path Miss Granger believes will bring her happiness."

"Promise me this much; you will at least tell her about the other option and give her time to consider it before you put any plans of assisted suicide into action."

"I will not give her false hope. If I tell her, I will make it clear why it is impossible."

"All I expect is that you deal with her in absolute honesty."

Severus's brows drew together. "I have done many things, Miss Lovegood, but I've never taken advantage in that way, or feigned a regard I did not feel to further my own ends. I'm hardly about to start now."

"Sometimes when you live with a fact for a very long time, you end up believing that it's true, even when it isn't."

Black eyes met silver, probing as deeply as they could without magical intent, but the woman was so facile in her indecipherability that he simply couldn't wrest any meaning from her Trelawney-ish statement.

"Miss Lovegood, I simply wish you to witness my signature on the document. I will then seal it, and I ask that you would deliver it by hand to my lawyers in Diagon Alley and obtain confirmation of receipt from them. After that, you need only confirm upon my death that the date on the will presented to the Ministry and the date here," he pointed to a date in last third of May which was almost obscured under all the curlicues in the header, "are the same."

He flipped to the bottom of the sheet, signing and printing his name and adding the same date again. He then moved aside, picking up his whisky glass, and pointing to a space just below where he had made his mark, where it said 'Witnessed by:'. 

Luna slid into the hard high-backed chair he had vacated and added her own name in both flowing loops and rounded capitals. 

Severus then bound the document with green ribbon, fixing a large globule of matching sealing wax where the vertical and horizontal bindings crossed, fixing them to the document. Then, he made a complicated series of moves over the parchment with his wand until the same '§' mark she had found on his magical devices appeared to glow softly from within the wax. 

Luna picked up the packet. "I'll put it in my bag and drop it off Monday lunchtime."

"Ask for Mr Drummond of Finchley, Fletcher and Drummond, almost opposite Flourish and Blott's. Look for a little brass plaque and they're on the third and fourth floor."

"I'll see to it, but after Monday I better not hear from Mr Drummond or any of his partners for a very long time or I'll be rather cross and very sad. It's so painful to watch people get hurt because of a stupid misunderstanding, especially friends like Hermione or people I admire like Professor McGonagall, and you are beginning to fall into both categories, though I wouldn't admire you so much if you did commit suicide. I can't buy another Snape the way I can buy another bottle of super-strong single malt. Great Uncle Lucius probably wouldn't be very happy either."

"Great Uncle Lucius?" Severus asked, the whites of his eyes showing all the way round as he only just stopped himself from spewing his whisky over all the papers on the escritoire.

"I thought you knew," Luna answered. "Of course Great-grandmother had so many girls before Lucius was finally born that Mother and Lucius were more like cousins than niece and uncle. I always thought you arranged for him to take care of me when I was taken from the Hogwarts Express."

"No, the Dark Lord didn't see fit to advise me of that particular plan in advance. Lucius volunteered to play jailer all on his own. Let me get this straight. Your mother was a Waffling... on her father's side, and a Malfoy on her mother's, and _her_ mother was Lucius's much older sister?"

"Oh, yes, he had six, sort of like the Weasleys only the other way around and further apart. Grandmother was the oldest. Mother was about three years older than Mr Malfoy. Even Great Aunt Calliope would have been married before he started at Hogwarts, and she was the youngest. Of course Grandmother and Narcissa didn't really get on very well, so after Mr Malfoy married, she and Mother didn't really see much of that side of the family, but until she left Hogwarts, Mother always spent a couple of weeks each summer with her grandparents. I wouldn't say she and Great Uncle Lucius were particularly close, but I get the impression that Mother was quite fond of him in her own way." 

"If Lucius stuck his neck out enough to have you placed in _his_ care when his position within the Death Eaters was already shaky, then I have no doubt that affection was returned."

Luna sighed. "I don't think I could ever marry a pureblood. It's all just so incestuous. You're lucky not having to worry about that."

"I thought Hermione said you were interested in one of Weasley's brothers, or at least she told me that was what that ad in the personal column referred to," Severus remarked.

"Oh, I don't want to _marry_ Charlie. I just want to have lots and lots of sex and make sure I try all the different variations like the waterfall where if you don't have all that upper body strength you need to use magic. There's nothing that breaks the mood like a man stopping to fumble around with his wand. I suppose there's always a possibility that I might like him enough to want to keep him, but it's probably a better idea if we just have wild animal sex whenever he's in the country until one of us falls in love with someone else. Oh! How's your flexibility, Severus?"

Severus tossed back what remained of his whisky and cleared his throat. "Well, on that note, I'll take my leave for an hour or two before you further feed my nightmares. I'll see you in the morning, Miss Lovegood. Sleep well."

  


* * *

  


Severus was in a familiar retreat, water lapping gently against a stone pier as he waited behind a curtain of trailing ivy. He peeled away his outer layers as the echoing clack of unhurried steps drew closer. He hardly dared look up as she approached, his heart hammering in his chest, and his every sense heightened in anticipation. 

The gentle lapping became louder in his ears, less distinct, His gaze finally took in her plastic beach shoes, her slender ankles, just beginning to take on a faint hint of tan as they peeked out from under a layered skirt of white cotton that alternately belled up and blew against her legs until he could make out their every curve... and the surf crashed in on their beach.

She wore a waterproof jacket over the gypsy top that matched the skirt, and her hair whipped around her, like a wild thing. As she drew closer, her eyes were clear and bright as if she were on the brink of shedding tears of happiness at finding him. Rich, beautiful brown eyes, that somehow held a dozen shades defying description. 

She tilted her head up to him, her hands reaching up to rest lightly on either side of his shirt collar. 

He buried one hand in that decadent tangled mane, almost overcome at the silken texture against his skin, while with his other arm her drew her tight against his body, feeling the heat of her core as clearly as she must feel his erection pressing into her soft flesh.

"Granger!" he growled, his eyes snapping wide open. 

His room wasn't quite dark. Dawn was shading its way through the closed curtains as his heart raced like a runaway train, and he almost fooled himself that the sound from the other side of the thin stone wall could have been his own name, but he knew that was wishful thinking. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione sat opposite Luna at the dining table, a tub of luxury ice cream midway between them and a Muffliato preventing their chatter from reaching the living room where Severus was reading, surrounded by all the cottage's four-legged inhabitants. "Luna, you know that I really appreciate all the time you've put into helping us with this and visiting my parents and everything."

Luna snorted with laughter, almost spitting out her spoon.

"What?" Hermione demanded. "I do."

Luna pointed at Hermione and laughed some more.

"Luna!"

"S-so-sorry," Luna hiccoughed. "You sound just like Gerald before he tells you the training you want is too expensive." 

"Well, if you didn't keep applying to go to the Chinese Thaumatobiological Study Centre..."

"One of these years he'll give in," Luna asserted. "For now, I'll make do with observing the mating rituals of the completely clueless."

"Good luck with that. I'm glad you find me and Ron so amusing, but I think you're in for a long wait. We're no closer to finding an answer, unless you count the one Snape won't tell me about because it's so evil."

Luna brayed with laughter again, her eyes filling up with tears. "H-H-Her—"

"Luna!" Hermione glared at her friend. "It's not funny."

Luna laughed.

Hermione grabbed the ice cream, pulling it over to her side of the table with an affronted air and helping herself while she waited for Luna to bring herself under control.

"I a-always said y-you were never any good at em-embracing new ideas," Luna forced out, tears rolling down her cheeks.

"And what's that got to do with me and Ron?" Hermione demanded.

"Nothing," Luna got up, finding some kitchen roll to wipe away the snot that refused to be sniffed back. "Hermione, you're never going to marry Ron."

"I might," Hermione protested.

"No, you won't."

"Yes, I will!"

"No. You won't." Luna made the pronouncement with the same calm detachment she might have used for relaying the weather forecast. "Hermione, I told you three weeks ago that Ronald is living in the same house with two quarter-Veela, _one_ of whom is not his sister-in-law, and you didn't even blink an eyelid."

"Gabrielle is a kid," Hermione replied automatically.

"Gabrielle is nineteen, looks like a Playwizard centrefold, and your fiancé helped rescue her from a lake full of merpeople so she thinks he's a hero," Luna reminded Hermione.

"Come on, Luna. Ron's not a fifteen-year-old testosterone bomb anymore. We've been together for seven years. He loves me."

"I know. And you love him, but it isn't working, and you know it. That's why you gave him that ultimatum."

"Yes," Hermione agreed, "but when I gave him that ultimatum, I promised if he made an effort, then I would give him a chance. I promised."

Luna rolled her eyes. "Hermione, can't you see what's right in front of you? You're as bad as each other. You could give Ron a million chances, and even if he didn't backslide, which you know he would, you would never be any happier than you are right here, right now."

"I promised, Luna," Hermione repeated. "He deserves a chance."

Luna reached out and swiped back the ice cream tub. "He does, but how can you be the one to give him that chance when you're in love with someone else?"

"That's ridiculous!" Hermione stared at her friend. "Who— Snape?"

Luna calmly carved out a piece of ice cream from the tub and sucked.

"That's mental!" Hermione protested.

Luna let the creamy strawberry tang melt on her tongue.

"He was our teacher!"

Luna drew the spoon slowly from her mouth and twirled it before delving into the tub again.

"We're like Flobberworms under his feet. I could dance naked in front of him and it wouldn't mean any more to him than when Bowie rolls on his back to get his tummy tickled."

"I've never known Hagrid to cook for his Flobberworms, or get their chair or heat their bath for them, or go on long romantic walks with them and watch the sunset," Luna remarked.

"He lets me tag along when he walks his dog. It's not like he wants me there. The rest is just guilt. As soon as I get my power back, he'll be off to Yorkshire like a shot and glad to see the back of me. You shouldn't jump to conclusions."

"His teeth go all clenchy whenever you mention Harry or Ronald."

"His teeth have always gone all clenchy whenever _anyone_ mentions Harry and Ron," Hermione responded exasperatedly. 

"Especially Ronald." Luna popped her spoon back into her mouth with the air of someone who has roundly defeated the opposition, and let the victory feast melt in its own sweet time. 

  


* * *

  


Hermione found as May drew to a close that she read less and less, whether it was at the croft on weekends or in the Imperial Library, the pride of Wizarding Moscow.

"Granger, if I have something stuck between my teeth, you could just tell me, otherwise I believe you'll find it's in both our interests for you to return to your book."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "Give me your cigarettes and your lighter!"

"You don't smoke." Snape's voice didn't lift quite enough to turn the phrase into a question, but almost. 

"Give me your cigarettes."

Snape rose to his feet, unhurriedly put on his jacket and returned both their books to the shelves. "Come on."

"The point was to get _away_ from you for five minutes," Hermione hissed even as she followed him through the building's marble corridors to the exit.

"It's a filthy habit. You don't want to start," Snape observed.

"How the hell would you know what I want?" Hermione retorted, her voice rising to a screech. "You think I'm still some stupid little kid with buck teeth who has to be protected from everything. Three weeks, Snape. Hogwarts finishes for the summer in three weeks and you still have me chasing rainbows while you refuse to tell me what the real answer is. I want to go home, Snape. I want to know where I belong. I'm tired of hiding, of not being in charge of my own life. I'm tired of waiting for you to admit that there isn't another way. I'm tired of waiting to find out if Ron is even talking to me, never mind whether he still wants to get married. I'm tired of feeling useless. And if I want a cigarette, you're damned well going to give me one."

Snape caught her arm, turning her to face him. He looked down at her, his face the same blank mask he had perfected in his days as a spy. "All you had to do was ask," he pointed out as he took them into the darkness of the first of a series of Apparitions.

Hermione wanted to scream when she realised he didn't mean the cigarette. 

  


* * *

  


Severus propped the note up against the alarm clock on the bedside unit. She was probably going to hate him when she realised what he had done, if she hadn't hated him already. He had known that their time was running out, but he had wanted to treasure those last few weeks. It would have been too much to hope for, though, and he wasn't about to turn into the kidnapper the Prophet and _Weasley_ had made him out to be.

Kitty and Escher wound around his feet, whining piteously, as if to say, "Why are we back here, Dad?"

Severus bent and ruffled first Kitty's fur and then Esh's for the last time. "Go to your mistress. Go on. She needs you," he encouraged them, but they followed his every step until he slipped out the smallest possible gap at the back door and left them closed in.

Their whines instantly changed to row-owrs of protest, but Snape reminded himself that they weren't his to comfort or appease. Setting his jaw, he returned to the croft to launder the bedding, and pack away every last sign that he, Hermione or Luna had ever been there, other than the absence of three quarters of an inch of cask strength whisky from the local distillery, and several stacks of books for which he no longer had any use.

Before he left, he sat down to write one last note of thanks, enclosing a promisory note for a hundred Galleons from his Gringott's account, in order to cover any reparation or redecoration costs.

He set the bag Lucius had given him on his shoulder and called Bowie to heel before he closed up the cottage and made good its wards, and then he walked down to the beach, their beach, to watch the sunset one last time. 

  


* * *

  


It was pitch black when Hermione came to. She just couldn't believe that the bastard had Stupefied her, or rather she could, and it left a physical pain in her chest. She fumbled around until she found the switch on her bedside lamp.

Kitty and Escher were nowhere to be seen, obviously blaming her for the disruption to their routine. 

However, the light fell on a sheet of creamy parchment folded in half and her name on the outside.

 _25th May_

 _Dear Granger,_

 _I imagine at this point you're not impressed with my ungallant behaviour. I'm sorry that our time together couldn't end with a more traditional farewell. Don't think that I did it because of any lack of faith in you. I do not believe you would have given my location to the authorities willingly, even had it not been under a Fidelius, but the Ministry has means to make one say things one would prefer not to say, and I have learned to err on the side of prudence. In this way, by the time you recover, you can truthfully say that you have no way of knowing where I may be._

 _I believe from some oblique references Luna made during our conversations that she is aware of the solution I never explained to you. Equally, she will be able to explain why it would not work between you and I._

 _I have not given up on our research, and I still hope to restore your power to you sooner rather than later, but it will be more difficult now that I will be moving from place to place._

 _If you find a way to restore your power and you need my cooperation, then I'm sure you will work out a way to get a message to me. Otherwise, I shall not intrude upon you. With regrets, I do not expect to be available on the second Saturday in August. By the time you read this, Bowie and I will most likely no longer be in Britain, except perhaps for as long as it takes to make an occasional business transaction._

 _Yours sincerely_

 _Snape_

The parchment crumpled in her hands and she curled up on her side and let the tears fall, wondering why she had goaded Snape into a clean break, which warped and twisted part of her psyche had decided that _this_ was better than going through the motions for the last three weeks she could have had with him. Oh, it was quicker, but fast or slow, the parting still left her raw, angry and yet at the same time curiously empty. She would never share a breakfast again with Severus Snape, never watch the sunset tint those ugly-beautiful features, never get to see him in the swimming trunks they had bought on their last Asda trip, never find out whether his kisses tasted of cigarettes or of chocolate as they did in her dreams. 

  


* * *

  


The owl arrived as the muezzin's cry called Rawalpindi's faithful to sunset prayer.

Severus detached the letter from its leg and poured bottled water into a bowl for the bird. He had no treats to offer. In the hot climate, he preferred not to keep food in his room, buying sustenance one meal at a time from the stalls in the bazaar on the rare occasions his appetite demanded it.

He broke the seal on the suspiciously thin missive and opened it out.

 _Malfoy Manor_  
Upper Uffington  
Wiltshire  
ENGLAND

 _27th Day of May_

 _Dearest Severus,_

 _Fortunately for you, you have not been my only correspondent of late. It has now been a few weeks since a distant relative got in touch with me to advise me of certain ill-advised plans of yours. As a result, I find myself unable to comply with your wishes and advise you as to the latest tittle-tattle about the location of a certain person._

 _I have to admit that Nott would almost have been a credible choice. He is just irritating enough that I might have believed he had found a way to incur your wrath, and you might even have convinced your insurance company... if you could have set it up to make it look like he caught you not only asleep, but drugged into a stupour. However, you and I both know that none of our former comrades at arms could raise a wand to you and live._

 _You really are being an ass about this. You were supposed to get all this fixed by now and allow me a chance to win my money back. Stop faffing around and brooding and being all melodramatic and bloody fix it properly. The girl says you know what you have to do; you just haven't got the balls to do it. For Merlin's sake, man. What the hell is meant to be scarier than the two demented lunatics you pretended to serve for two decades? You survived the damned snake. What do you think a powerless Mudblood is going to do to you?_

 _I shall be very cross if you miss my birthday ball,_

 _L._

  


* * *

  


Hermione dragged herself out of bed to put out food for Escher and Kitty and top up their water. Since she was up, she detoured to the bathroom and made use of the facilities. She stared at herself in the mirror over the sink as she washed her hands. Her hair had lost its shine, dark and greasy at the roots and matted-looking elsewhere; her t-shirt justifiably looked as if she had worn it for the better part of a week. There were shadows under her eyes that no amount of concealer could cover up, even if she could have summoned up the energy to use it, and her skin had taken on a yellowish, greasy-looking tinge, but no one was going to see her, anyway, so she ambled back to bed and crawled under the duvet. 

It was late afternoon when someone began to pound on her door.

She wondered whether Ron or Harry or Neville had heard somehow that she was back or whether they just turned up every so often to annoy the sheep that were her only real neighbours. Maybe it was Friday already and Luna had gone to the croft as usual to find it empty and told the others. She stuck her fingers in her ears. They would go. Eventually.

The knocking stopped. 

She heard the lock click and pulled the covers over her head, which lasted about five seconds before there was a thump and the patter of feet and she found herself involved in a familiar tug of war.

"Bowie, you shouldn't be here."

"He missed you," answered a voice from the doorway.

Hermione turned.

"Hell, woman, what did you do?" Snape demanded. "Donate your hair to the RSPB as nesting material? I didn't think it was possible to get yourself in that much of a state in a day and a half, or did Weasley tell you the good news before everyone else." 

"We— Weasley?" Hermione asked, her voice cracking from disuse. "Which Weasley?"

Snape's left eyebrow hitched up half an inch. "You haven't read yesterday's Prophet?" he asked, his tone suddenly less brusque.

"I haven't restarted the subscription. They must have stopped delivering after two or three days of not getting paid."

"Then what the hell's wrong with you?" Snape demanded. He sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed the backs of his fingers to her forehead. "You don't feel like you've got a fever. Bath!" he ordered.

"Snape, even if I wanted a bath, what makes you think I'm going to parade around for you in my knickers, which is all I'm wearing under these covers."

"If you've been wearing those knickers as long as you've been wearing that t-shirt, then you damn well need a bath. You were wearing that in Moscow."

"So?"

"You were wearing that in Moscow," Snape repeated more slowly, his lips quirking into a hint of a smirk as he finished.

Hermione's eyes narrowed, but the smug expression on Snape's face appeared to be unshakable. "I'm going to brew a pot of coffee, and see if you have any people food in your kitchen. I advise you to be in the bath and in the process of getting yourself cleaned up by the time I finish, or if I have to dump you in the bath, fetid clothing and all, I will do it. Weasley can wait."

Hermione threw back the covers as he turned away. "What can wait? What did the Prophet say?"

"Granger, your time is running out. We'll discuss this human being to human being, once you look like less like Bob Marley's ghost."

"You don't look so great yourself, you know," Hermione accused, leaning around the doorframe to do so. "I don't know if it's a Transfiguration or if you've had food poisoning, but the skinnier you get, the bigger your nose looks."

The smirk finally disappeared. "Bath, Granger! Now!" 

"You're not my father," Hermione argued.

"No," Severus agreed in a rather silky tone. "I suspect I would get a _lot_ more enjoyment out of putting you in that bath than your father ever would."

 _"What?"_ It came out as a squeak.

"You heard."

By the time he found where she kept her coffee, he could hear the water running. He felt more than a little disappointed. 

  


* * *

  


"Here!" Severus poured Hermione a coffee when she finally emerged into the kitchen, and slid a box of assorted pastries in front of the empty stool next to his at the counter. "You have the housekeeping skills of a cuckoo. I went shopping."

"Hmpf!" Hermione equivocated, adjusting the neck of her satin robe so that it covered her more securely. "Prophet."

"After you have something to eat and finish that coffee. Damned if you're going to faint on me."

Hermione pulled an apple danish from the box and dutifully took a mouthful. Her stomach rumbled and she began to eat the rest with apparent relish, washing it down with mouthfuls of coffee. "'M eating... 'cause 'm hungry. Not 'cause you tell me," she pointed out between mouthfuls.

"Of course you are, dear," Snape answered snidely.

Hermione picked up a currant scone and began pulling it apart, popping small pieces into her mouth. "You. Here. Why?"

"Bowie missed you," Snape repeated. "Then when I saw the Prophet..." He reached into a bag Hermione recognised from her first breakfast at Portsoy and finally pulled out the newspaper, passing it to her.

Hermione unfolded it gingerly, but she couldn't miss the headline story. Pictures, as has often been said, speak louder than words. The telephoto lens had captured Ron in all his tarnished glory, bestowing an awkward but enthusiastic kiss on nineteen-year-old Gabrielle Delacoeur, while she, rather more deftly, disposed of his shirt, time and time again. "He _still_ looks like he's trying to eat her face," Hermione remarked wearily as she slid from her stool. "I better put some proper clothes on and phone my parents."

"Gran-ger," Severus growled. "Don't take too long." With a snap of his fingers and a gesture he sent Bowie trotting after her. 

She made it as far as jeans and bra before the tears got the better of her, slipping off the side of the bed and onto the floor so she could wrap her arms around Bowie's neck and bury her face in his coat. 

It seemed that Severus must have been listening pretty closely because only seconds after the first real sob, he was helping her into a t-shirt and then her favourite fluffy jumper and carrying her through to the sofa, where he held her in his arms, her face buried against his chest as her tears continued to fall. Bowie waited until they settled and then put his head on Severus's knee, pressed as close to Hermione as he could. 

Severus's fingers carded through her damp curls, finding their freshly-conditioned texture every bit as soft as he had dreamed. "I'm sorry I messed up your life," he whispered, just loudly enough for her to hear.

"You didn't," she answered almost as softly. "It was messed up before you got there. I— We— This— Seven years. He couldn't even do me the courtesy of waiting until he could break it off properly after seven years together."

"He's an idiot," Severus murmured.

Hermione gave a tiny snort. "Are you sure you saw what I looked like this morning? I think ninety-nine men out of a hundred would say he traded up."

"He's an idiot," Severus repeated. "I don't give a damn what she looks like."

"No, he's not. He's finally not. He's a rat, but he's finally doing the right thing... maybe." Hermione squirmed for a second and then reached out to set something down on the coffee table. It was a ring. The smallest diamond chip Severus thought he had ever seen. "I should have broken it off as soon as I came home, but I didn't _do_ anything. I stopped. And he kept on living." 

"The rat thing?" Severus suggested. "It could be arranged."

Hermione's shoulders heaved and she made a strange noise.

"Are you crying or laughing?"

"Both," Hermione admitted, "but I think I've gone beyond the canary stage, at least where Ron's concerned. Of course, that doesn't mean I'm too mature to put his ring in the Ministry fountain."

"If you wanted to melt it down first, I have the equipment—"

He was cut off by a rat-tat-a-tat-tat-taat-tat from the front of the house. He held Hermione in place when she would have risen to answer the knock and then pulled out his wand and gave it a flourish that was accompanied by the sound of the front door swinging open.

"Oh good!" Luna sighed as she wandered in, paying no particular heed to either the fact that Hermione had been crying or that she was squarely in Severus's arms. "You're here. I tried the croft already. You could have told me you were coming back here and I would have aired things out a bit. Is that coffee?"

Severus exhaled and shook his head as the blonde wandered off into the kitchen.

"Does anybody mind if I have the jam doughnut?" Luna's voice sing-songed through from the other room.

"Help yourself," Severus called back in reply. "And where the hell were you yesterday?" he added in a more disgruntled tone. "I thought _you_ would have checked on her!"

"Well, I thought I might be interrupting something, but then there was no little otter Patronus message to say I wasn't needed, so when I saw the Prophet this morning I came, or rather I went, but then I came," Luna concluded as she Levitated three mugs of coffee into the room, while holding a half-eaten pastry in her left hand. The mugs landed on the coffee table, she let her bag slide to the floor, and then she flopped over an armchair, her legs dangling over one of the arms. She tucked her wand behind an ear, finished her pastry, licked her fingers clean and then floated the three coffees to their respective owners. 

Severus took a gulp from his mug and then set it down on the floor within reach. Hermione cradled hers in both hands, sipping at it now and again.

"And? What's the fool done now?"

"Oh! Hermione, I spoke to your parents earlier. I told them to go ahead with everything except the registrar unless they heard from you directly to tell them otherwise. You'll get far more enjoyment out of that bed with Severus than you ever would have with Ron, anyway."

"What bed?"

"The bed for the not-wedding night. It's the biggest hotel bed in England. You'll really like the castle. I helped pick it. Do you think, if you've got that room for both nights instead of sharing the twin room with me on the Friday, that your parents are going to want the room where that Muggle king and the wife with too many fingers stayed?"

"Possibly," Hermione answered just as Severus spat out, "I hope not!" 

"I wonder if that was a Transfiguration accident?" Luna said thoughtfully.

"No," Hermione derided automatically.

Severus replied differently. "Of course. Everybody knows Anne Boleyn's mother was hexed while she was pregnant."

"What?" Hermione demanded. "I didn't know that."

"Every half-blood, then," he added. Severus was looking at Luna with a less than friendly glare.

"Oh good! It's working. I wasn't sure how much Veritaserum to put in because I didn't think you would drink the _whole_ mug before you realised." She put down her own mug and rose to her feet before settling her bag on her shoulder and rummaging around in it. "Right, well, here's today's Prophet. Apparently, Ronald and Gabrielle eloped, so even if you were still insisting yesterday that you promised you would give him a chance and it wasn't really his fault because of Gabrielle's Veela wiles, you're _really_ off the hook now." She inserted both arms into the bag and eventually wrested forth a book at least twice the size of the patchwork monstrosity. "And this is the book I suggest you refer to, although for the practice runs I think you could just go with the flow. When you do it for real, though, I think maybe _if_ Severus can do that with his legs you should try for Yab-Yum." She rummaged in the monster bag of holding, extracting a smaller bag. "Severus's wand is the Vajra or thunderbolt obviously, but I packed a bell and a Kartika and a Kapala. They're all in there. Oh, and I didn't know when you'd need the kit so I skipped the sacrificial meat or blood, but there are some of those Muggle jelly babies. They should do, symbolically speaking. Right, I'll be off. Ask Severus, after I've gone, about why this is going to work."

"Snape? What on earth is she talking about?"

"Tantric magic. The Yab-Yum is a sexual position which is symbolic of complete unity and equality, the coming together of male and female as a path to enlightenment, the combining and sharing of two practitioners' magic."

He pressed a finger to her lips to cut off her next question.

"Enlightenment is not achieved through physical action alone. There must be at the very least the seeds of an abiding love on both sides. That is why I never told you about it while you were tied to Weasley, why I thought until I saw you in that t-shirt this morning that it would never work."

"But Lily. Your dreams?"

"Granger, I haven't dreamed about anyone other than you for nearly two months." 

"Oh!" Hermione put her drink down, deciding it was time to see if her subconscious had been right. This time it was neither chocolate nor cigarettes. His kisses tasted of coffee, but that was just fine. 

"Granger," Severus sighed. "I didn't come here for this. I don't want you to screw me to get back at that waste of space. I came here as a friend."

"I can't say there's not a little bit of revenge in there," Hermione admitted, "but it's not why I kissed you. I kissed you... because I'm in love with you, and because I hope you're in love with me." She caught her lower lip between her teeth, in a way that usually meant she was struggling with some mental exercise. "I'm not sure I'm ready for much more than kisses, yet. I need to grieve, even though breaking up is the right thing, and I don't really want to rush experiences that should be savoured, just to get my power back, especially considering that as soon as I get my power back I have to go back to work. Even so, I want to... experience enlightenment with you, only ever with you, and I am going to k— berate Luna severely for putting that in our coffee. Veritaserum lends itself to a recitation of events, but it's not really helpful for talking about the nuances of emotions."

"I dare say she felt she had valid reasons, my love," Severus responded as he wrapped a single curl around one finger and then watched it unravel as he slowly pulled his hand away. "She has tried to convince me to broach the subject of Tantric Magic with you several times, and I have always been reluctant to make myself vulnerable by admitting that I believed my feelings for you were more than sufficient, all the while knowing that your feelings for Weasley had to take precedence over any regard you might have for me because you are too honest to marry without love."

"I do love him," Hermione explained, "but it's not the way I feel about you. The closer the wedding came, the more I began to think I was making a mistake. I felt as if I was doing all the work, and Ron didn't even try to help out. He kept acting up whenever I spent time with intelligent men or even if he thought I _might_ have spent time with them. Considering where I work, and the overtime we need to do sometimes, it wasn't a recipe for success." Hermione looked to Severus with a pleading glance, as if she wanted to stop, but couldn't; the words simply kept pouring out. "The way he reacted when I passed out at work and missed dinner at the Burrow was the final straw. I told him I had doubts. I promised I would give him a chance to start treating me better, only then I found out I had activated the puzzle and it became even more complicated.

"It would have seemed disloyal to him to admit to you, to someone who wasn't part of our circle of friends, that I was on the verge of calling the wedding off," she explained, "even though Luna and Neville were both there when I gave him the ultimatum. And you crept up on me. It seemed impossible that _you_ would ever really notice me, me, just plain old Hermione. Even when I had my magic, we're leagues apart. I didn't see how I could be anything but a burden to you without it, and yet we fitted so well. I have never been happier. And so much of what I feel for you, the admiration and respect, the fascination with the way your mind works, all that has always been there ever since I was a buck-toothed know-it-all. When you treated me with respect and consideration, when I saw the man instead of the teacher, I didn't even realise I'd been falling until it was too late, but I had to keep the promise... until Luna made me realise that I couldn't." 

"I was on my best behaviour, at first," Severus admitted. "I couldn't afford to drive you away, and I felt responsible. After a while, it was just habit, and it doesn't really take a lot of extra effort to care for two when you're used to fending for yourself."

"I don't want to talk anymore," Hermione sighed tiredly, "not until we have more control."

"Nor do I." 

"Would you think I was a total girl if I asked you to take me to bed and just hold me?"

"Yes, but I would do it anyway, and you're a woman, not a girl," Severus answered, lifting her gently.

Bowie was dislodged in the process and he began to whine. He looked from master to mistress and then at the door. 

"I can wait," Hermione told Severus with a smile, resting her head on his shoulder. "It seems Bowie can't."

Severus shook his head. He opened the front door, and Bowie shot out, but Severus then continued on his way. "You may be able to wait, but I don't want to."


	5. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione and Severus set a seal on their new found relationship by not getting married.

  
  


_"We_ were going to get married in the Summer House and have the guests in the garden," Ron informed Gabrielle in a stage whisper. "The Drawing Room only holds fifty people, but I expect Snape doesn't have any friends to invite."

"Ronald, you're still an arse," Luna informed him, appearing from behind him and walking right on past on her way to speak to the Grangers. Her dress had a calf-length handkerchief hem in layers of lilac and lavender silk that were so fine as to be translucent, making her look even more like a wingless fairy than normal.

"And Severus has all the friends he needs, Mr Weasley," Minerva added. "Even if he doesn't have thirty-seven cousins with attendant spouses and children. If _you_ aren't one of them, then perhaps you should retire to another room until the ceremony is over."

 _"Professor!_ You can't tell me you think this is all on the up and up?" Ron protested. "Hermione would never marry the Greasy Git, not that this is even a wedding. It's just Stockport Syndrome. He kidnapped her and held her hostage until she _thinks_ she's in love with him."

"And the Chudley Cannons will beat the Magpies in the league this year," Minerva retorted derisively. "Don't you use your damned eyes, boy? The pair of them glow. If you had half a brain in your head, you'd know what caused Hermione's recovery, and it's got nothing to do with anything as artificially induced as _Stockholm_ Syndrome..." She silently mouthed the words, 'or Veela magic,' lest any Muggles should be nearby. "Now, still your malicious tongue before I tell your mother. I dare say that Molly was less than happy with you behaving the way you did, and even less so that she was deprived of a wedding when you had to elope to salvage Gabrielle's reputation and legitimise the grandchild she's expecting in five months. If I were you, I wouldn't risk disgracing her further with a display of sour grapes. Good day!"

Minerva had barely departed before there was a ringing of cutlery on crystal. The crowd turned their attention to where Mr Granger stood at the front of the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, if you could take your seats according to the seating chart by the door, champagne will be served and the ceremony will begin in a few minutes." He gestured toward the many sofas spread around the room. "Lunch will be served immediately after in the Tudor Hall." 

Luna drifted from the room, pausing only to ensure that her father was safely settled on a sofa near the front beside Harry and Ginny, and to mouth the word, "Arse!" at Ron in his seat at the back of the room, behind Hagrid and Olympe Maxime.

When everyone was seated and champagne had been served, a quartet of musicians, seated off to the left near the front of the room, began to play. The whispers of the audience died away and they twisted toward the back of the room, where Hermione entered on Severus's arm with Lucius escorting Luna a few feet behind.

Severus and Lucius wore outfits very similar to traditional Muggle morning suits in black, but those in the know could tell they had been styled by wizards. Severus's hair fell in soft layers, Hermione having cut it for him the week before in preparation. 

Hermione's dress was longer than Luna's but in the same ethereal style. Deep violet overlaid layers of black, and both women carried small posies of violets rather than more ostentatious bouquets. Hermione's hair was held back at the sides with combs decorated with the same delicate flowers, but it spilled loose beyond her waist, her normally wild curls tamed by Sleekeezy into rippling waves.

When they reached the oriel window that dominated the end of the room, Hermione passed her posy to Luna and both attendants stepped off to the sides, leaving the happy couple bathed in the late morning sunlight that seemed to have a magic all of its own, filled with sparkling dust motes.

The couple turned to each other, taking their partner's right hand in their left. Hermione spoke her vows first, her eyes never leaving Severus's face. "I, Hermione Jean Granger, do hereby pledge to share with you, Severus Snape, all that I am, and all that I will ever be, to love and care for you from this day forward for as long as you so desire." 

Severus responded. "I, Severus Snape, do hereby pledge to share with you, Hermione Jean Granger, all that I am, and all that I will ever be, to love and care for you from this day forward for as long as you so desire and to nurture with you any future offspring as they grow to adulthood. Will you share my name?" 

"I will."

Severus's hand dipped into his waistcoat pocket. "Will you wear this ring, one of a pair wrought to symbolise our union?" 

Hermione's smile, if anything grew wider. "I will," she answered, waiting as he slid the band onto her wedding finger. She opened a tiny pouch which had been tied to her wrist with a ribbon and tipped a second ring into the palm of her left hand. "Will you wear this ring, which you have wrought to symbolise our union?"

At the sight of joyful tears welling in Hermione's eyes, even Severus deigned to smile slightly, as she placed the ring on his finger. "I will."

Severus nodded to Luna, who set the bouquets down on a small side table, lifting instead a shallow silver quaich by both handles and bringing it over to her former teacher before returning to get a glass each of champagne for herself and for Lucius.

"We will now drink a toast to celebrate," Severus announced. "The years of life are as a cup of wine poured out for you to drink. This Loving Cup contains within it a wine with certain properties that are sweet and symbolic of happiness, joy, hope, peace, love and delight. This same wine also holds some bitter properties that are symbolic of disappointment, sorrow, grief, despair, and life's trials and tribulations. Together the sweet and the bitter represent love's journey and all of the experiences that are a natural part of it. We ask that as we drink from this Loving Cup, so may you drink from your glasses, so that in sharing the wine you can also share in the blessings of this union. 

"Those who drink deeply with an open heart and willing spirit, invite the full range of challenges and experiences into their being for themselves and for Hermione and myself." Severus lifted the chalice. "May all the sweetness life's cup holds for each of you be the sweeter because we drink it together, and may whatever drops of bitterness it might contain be less bitter because you share them with family and friends. Drink now, and may the cup of your lives be sweet and full to running over." Severus carefully tilted the quaich to Hermione's lips, holding it there until she had drunk several mouthfuls.

Hermione then took the cup from him, holding it as high as she could while still able to see how full it was so that Severus had to duck his head slightly to drink from it, their eyes meeting over its rim. 

After a few mouthfuls, Hermione drew the cup back, ready for the next toast. "This Loving Cup is symbolic of the pledges we have made to one another to share together the fullness of life. As we drink from this cup, we acknowledge to one another that our lives, separate until this moment, have now become one. We toast the love we have shared in the past," she promised, tilting the cup up to Severus's lips once more, and then drinking from it again as Severus held it for her.

"We drink to the love we share in the present, on this day where we are united together in the sight of friends and family," Severus added, again allowing Hermione to sip from the cup and then letting her almost pour some into his mouth as it became more difficult for her to tell how much wine was left.

"And, finally," they pronounced in chorus, Severus's hands coming to rest over Hermione's so that they held the chalice together, "we drink to our love in the future." Hermione drank first, swallowing much more of the wine with this toast than with any of the others. When she gave a double blink, Severus lifted the cup to his own mouth, Hermione's hands still cradled under his, but his fingers guiding it as he drained what remained to the very last drop.

Once the toast was complete, Luna placed her empty glass and Lucius's on the table and then took the quaich from Severus and Hermione. 

Hermione reached up, wrapping her arms around his neck, and Severus lowered his lips to hers for a lingering tender kiss. 

  


* * *

  


Luna basked for some hours in the glow of a task well done, as numerous courses were served and speeches given. She danced the first dance with Lucius, who complimented her on her dress and on her letter-writing skills.

"Hermione would have been very cross if Severus's plan had worked," Luna answered dreamily. "She's a little bit scary when she's cross, so I thought we ought to avoid that if we could."

"She is fortunate to have found a man like Severus," Lucius replied.

"Almost as fortunate as he was to find her," Luna agreed.

Lucius smiled. "Indeed. I might even have considered her as a possible daughter-in-law, _if_ she hadn't been a Mud— I mean Muggle-born."

"Then it's even luckier for Draco that she is. The dance is about to end. Do you think you could lead in _that_ direction?" she asked, nodding over behind Lucius's left shoulder. 

"Are you scheming again?" Lucius asked, obligingly making a turn. "Perhaps I should have looked closer to home."

Luna wrinkled her nose. "Draco's far too grim for me, and I really can't be bothered with all the politics and posturing."

"Dare I ask what you're up to?" Lucius said.

"I suspect you might, but I would be distracted by Wrackspurts and ignore you completely," Luna replied and gave a little curtsey as the dance came to a close.

Turning towards the edge of the dance floor, Luna beamed at Arthur Weasley as if finding him there was the happiest of coincidences. "Hello, Mr Weasley, I'm _so_ glad you could come."

"Of course," Arthur remarked affably. "Hermione's practically family, and Severus is a fine man."

"I know it's a little rude, since you're just normal guests, but there are a couple of little behind the scenes tasks that might involve some lifting, and I wondered if I might be able to borrow Charlie for a little while."

The shorter redhead looked over at the mention of his name. 

"I'm sure he'll be happy to lend a hand," Arthur said. "Won't you, son?"

Charlie's gaze flicked down over Luna and rather more slowly back up, stopping at her eyes, a tentative smile forming. "Yeah, I'll help if I can."

"Oooh, good, I'll show you where we're going. If you get two ice-buckets with fresh bottles of champagne, I'll get the glasses."

Luna led him first to the South Wing Tower, where they climbed a spiral staircase to the third floor and the Superior Suite. She set two of the glasses down on the chest of drawers beside the bed, and then added an ice-bucket she took from Charlie's arms.

"Do you want these others in the bathroom?" Charlie suggested.

"Oh, no, those are for the Duke's Bedroom downstairs."

Charlie's brow wrinkled slightly. "Who's staying there?"

"I am," Luna answered, "And you... if you would like. According to Hermione, it's practically mandatory for the bridesmaids at Muggle not-weddings to have lots and lots of sex, preferably with the most dashing single man they can find, and I wouldn't want to break with tradition. It might be bad luck." 

"The m— most dashing single man they can find?" Charlie repeated.

"With the cutest stutter," Luna added, closing the gap between them and tilting her head up until her lips were only half an inch from Charlie's, her breasts a hair's breadth from his chest.

Charlie lowered his head unhurriedly and savoured her lips with gentle thoroughness, drawing her close with a splayed hand at the back of her waist. 

Luna grinned through swollen lips when he finally lifted his head, leading him back to the stairs. "I'll take that as a yes," she sighed. 


End file.
